Busy Thursday for the urbanmoms families, as Jen and I took our kids to the Royal Ontario Museum and the Bata Shoe Museum! Since both museums are only a block away from each other, it seemed like a great way to take in two attractions in one day (and on one subway fare!)
At the ROM, we decided to divide and conquer, so I headed off with the two oldest children (aged nearly 11 and nearly 10) while Jen joined the two 7 year-olds. Let me start by pointing out that the ROM has one of the best collections of any museum in North America, and when you tour with tweens, you will get a great overview of everything, but don’t expect to explore any part in great detail. I let the kids decide what they wanted to see, and they immediately shouted “China and Canada!” That sounded good with me, and then we spent about 3.7 minutes in each exhibit! it wasn’t long before they located the elevator, so up to the second level we went, in search of rocks and minerals. Now this exhibit really captured their attention. They spent ages exploring close-up images of the specimens on the interactive touch-screen computers, punctuated by many exclamations of “wow!” and “cool!”
My iPhone also got a workout in the gemstone section, where we had to google the birthstones of everyone in our party and then locate them in the displays. I found out that my birthstone, emerald, is actually a green beryl. Cool!
Soon enough it was time for lunch, so we headed across the street to the three-story McDonalds, (which deeply impressed my children!) and then back over to the ROM again. That’s one thing I really appreciated…as long as you hold on to your tickets, you can exit and re-enter the museum throughout the day. It’s a nice feature as then you’re not tied to eating in the museum’s cafe, and there are plenty of great places to choose from (including a 3-story McDs!) in downtown Toronto.
If it were up to the kids, we would have spent the rest of the afternoon still scrutinizing the minerals, gems and rocks, but I decided I wanted a hit of ancient history so I dragged them up to the Ancient Egypt exhibit, which I thought was utterly fantastic! There’s a real mummy and – what I liked best – some great artifacts demonstrating the daily lives of the ancient Egyptians. Actually, next to the British Museum (which I think is likely unparalleled) the ROM has the best Ancient Egyptian exhibit I’ve seen in any museum. The kids certainly got into the spirit:
After Egypt we headed off to the Natural History exhibit, where we scoped out the bat cave (cool), made friends with a sunfish…
…and discovered that our “new favourite animal” was the kiwi:
And of course, no visit to a museum would be complete without visiting a few of our fossilized friends, because my daughter is a real dino-maniac:
She looks decidedly more thrilled at the dinos than Jen’s son! We had lots of fun in a mini-exhibit on dinosaur eggs and hatchlings, too:
Whew! There was lots to see, and we saw most of it! I would definitely recommend a visit to the ROM if you’re in Toronto…in fact, I would rate it as a must-see!
Luckily we had a few hours left in our day, so we took the walk west a block and hit the Bata Shoe Museum. I was super-keen to go (I love shoes), and my girls were eager, but Jen’s kids were a bit hesitant. Until we got inside and realized that the first activity involved trying on lots of silly and crazy shoes! And even though everyone really enjoyed the other exhibits (especially the celebrity shoes, like Shaquille O’Neal’s size 20 high-tops and Terry Fox’s single blue adidas runner), I think this ranks as the kids’ favourite part of the museum. To wit:
Now I personally loved the whole museum…it’s amazing how something as simple as shoes can manage to make you feel a kinship with the entire human race, but they somehow do. And the special exhibit on socks was amazing…did you know that the origins of knitting are lost in time, but archaeologists believe the craft likely began in Iran thousands of years ago? And knitting was brought to Europe through the influence of the Moors in Spain, who knit and embroidered exquisite silk stockings. We even saw socks knitted from human hair (scratchy! not to mention creepy!). And the renaissance chopines are not to be missed…you would not believe what these people walked on…high heels even for babies!
But above all, my favourite moment (and yes, I realize this makes me not much better than the kids) was the celebrity shoe exhibit, and specifically, these shoes:
Yes, that’s me with Michael Buble’s shoes!
I love the ROM! The Cairo Museum has a pretty good Egyptian exhibit, including King Tuts Throne.
Believe it or not, I’ve never been to the Bata Shoe Museum…must go someday.