Our Trip to the ROM

Yesterday, Chris and I met up after his work to go to the ROM, or the Royal Ontario Museum, to enjoy their half priced Friday night program. It's a really neat museum with just about everything inside of it. There were dinosaurs, lots of exhibits with taxidermied animals, collections of art, giant totem poles, a bat cave, recreations of rooms from different time periods, items from tribes of people from Africa to New Zealand to South America, and even more things that we didn't get a chance to see due to time constraints. It was a pretty great trip and filled with way more information and culture than I could absorb in two and a half hours.

After the museum, Chris and I went to Spring Rolls and I had dim sum for the first time! I had siu mai, or shumai, which is a pork and shrimp and wonton wrappers and it's wonderful. Now I want to go to a whole dim sum restaurant before I leave and try a bunch of different kinds, since there are a million in Toronto and one in Jacksonville.

I'm getting hungry, so I'm just going to post a bunch of pictures while not trying not to obsess over dim sum.

The museumused to be just one big old building, but in 2002 they added this insane crystal structure to one half. It's strange and exciting, and while some people really hate it, I like it a lot.

I particularly like the parts of the museum where the irregular geometric craziness of the crystal building interacts with the more predictable old building. This used to be the outside, but now it's inside!

We took the stairs from floor to floor, and between each level there is a landing with mini-exhibits. This one showed various birds, finger bowls, and small animal skeletons.

The stairs are known as the J.P. Driscoll Family Stair of Wonders, and were a clever, unexpected touch.

A giant prehistoric turtle floats through space in front of the architectural details of the ROM.

Chris and I agree that this fish is wonderful.

Dinosaur! Crazy windows! ROM!

Hey Mom, it's a sloth! I did a report on sloths in the third grade for Ms. Jobo's class. ^_^

It's official. Underneath their moosey coats, they're just nightmares.

Ancient plant and animal indentations that kind of look like art you'd find at Kirkland's.

The bird section was AWESOME. The birds are all strung from the ceiling and to one another.

Part of the huge generic nature/biodiversity section, which I really enjoyed. Everything was unfortunately behind glass, though, so lots of bad reflections in the pictures from that area.

These owls were hanging above us!

I really liked the freaked out/disapproving face on this fish. Can't get my bangs to do that thing, though.

A huge Japanese spider crab, one of the few animals displayed alone, looking gigantic.

This might be a children's exhibit, but here I am petting a national symbol of Canada. It's so soft!

This narwhal just thinks he's soooo smart. Stop smirking, you fat unicorn.

We enjoyed the touch-screen monitors throughout the museum and on this one watched a puffer fish escape the grasp of an eel by filling up with water.

So many birds!

 

Me and an ocean sunfish, a fish that looks (to me) like a shark that's always mid-turn. But it's not! That's the whole thing, right there. It's so weird looking, and I love it.

Me and Bull, a rhino that used to live at the Toronto Zoo. Chris once saw him pee, back when he was alive.

There are a few more pictures, but I have to run. We're going to Chris's family's house this afternoon for dinner, and I'm not ready at all. More pictures of the cultural parts of the museum to come, though not as many pictures as I would like due to our camera dying. Thanks for checking it out!