Ontario Science Centre & ROM

The Bates family trapped in red pins..
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We have been using our CityPasses with abandon this week and visited the Ontario Science Centre on Thursday and the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum) yesterday (Saturday). In between I (Sam) have been working on the new film with Adam, & Jont and the boys have gone bowling and swimming.

The Science Centre was a strange and wonderful place, architecture was of the 1970s bomb shelter variety (think Royal Festival Hall in London) and food was pretty dire but the exhibition space was really well thought out and included some brilliant stuff for us and the kids. There was a great sports science section (where you could test your sporting ability & reflexes on lots of interactive machines), a free-style section where the boys made little stop frame animated films from models they built (I was so proud!) and a great area for under-8s called KidSpark where we all got carried away by the enormous pin impression thing (see pics).

strange and wonderful....

Stan's 14th hot dog this week. 'sprouts please mummy!'
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The boys also got to do a workshop with Carolyn (a nice anthropologist who'd studied her masters in Sheffield) about toys where they got to make a cup and ball toy of the type that our grandparents would have played with. They loved it and it was a great end to our day.

Yesterday we went to the ROM, a huge building that has had a contemporary extension - it's like a huge cuboid space ship that's crashed into the original C19th building (a bit like our home extension plans back in the UK - hi, neighbours!). There were lots of dinosaur skeletons, LOADS of stuffed animals of all descriptions (pretty weird after seeing most of them alive at the zoo) and a good hands on section for the kids where they could dress up in armour and dig for dinosaur bones (at the same time with our two!).

Archie mastering the ancient art of the cup & ball.
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There was also a special exhibition of glass paperweights which the boys found strangely compelling (they had a video and some comfy leather chairs, I think that was a major attraction) but Jont & I found amusing in a sadly immature way. Imagine all your grannies' ornaments taken from her front room and placed in glass cases, with reverent display notes, and you'll get the picture. Cheese heaven! (or hell - I think we were pretty much museum-ed out by that point)

We made sure to pick up sandwiches at St Lawrence market before we went to the ROM, as the selection of food at every CityPass place we've been to has been so abysmal (another hot dog and coke anyone? Even the kids are going off fast food - Stanley has been asking for sprouts!). Ironically though the ROM has fantastic food - we went to the lower level cafeteria for a drink and were amazed that you could get nice freshly cooked food in non-styrofoam containers. We were disappointed not to be hungry - something which happens so rarely in our family...