Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum has a fancy sounding name, but will it be fun for a GeekDad and his Geeklets?
Yes!
The first thing that catches your attention is the museum itself. The Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, designed by Daniel Libeskind, is an expansion graphed onto the older masonry building. It's as architecturally interesting outside as it is inside. It didn't have much or an obvious impact on the kids, but it really caught my attention.
Dinosaurs
ROM has a great collection of dinosaur skeletons. The highlight is Gordo the Barosaurus, measuring 90 feet long and 15 tons, with a whip-like tail. It's the largest dinosaur skeleton on display in Canada, and the only real fossil *Barosaurus *mounted in the world.
The ROM has hundreds of dinosaur skeletons. You will see the Stegosaurus, Tyrannosaurus rex, Triceratops, Deinonychus, and the Hadrosaur.
The Bat Cave
The ROM’s Bat Cave is a realistic portrayal of the St. Clair Cave in Jamaica. It's full of bats, animatronics and atmospheric sights and sounds. Unfortunately, it was closed for technical reasons during our visit. We glimpsed the techs with their laptops open running through lines of code. I had visions of robot bats gone crazy.
Since Iceland's Eyjafjallajökul volcano kept us from out European vacation, Toronto became Plan B. (You already heard about the CN Tower.) The kids may have missed out on the Atomium in Brussels, but they had a great time at the Royal Ontario Museum.
All images by Doug Cornelius: Royal Ontarion Museum 2010.
