Awesome day at ROM

With 34$ in the account and some cash in the purse, I packed my lunch had a good breakfast and headed to the Royal Ontario Museum in the morning 11 a.m. Though the entrace for adult is 17$ for general admission I could not stop myself from buying the general+tattoo show ticket which costed 25$ after seeing the freaking tattoo show posters all over Toronto.

( Sorry took TTC so can't tell you on the parking stuff :D )

After rushing through bus and subway, got down at the museum subway station. Only subway of Toronto with these kind of cool pillars .

Right outside the museum subway station, on the Queen's park street is the home for this bizarre looking huge architecture the Royal Ontario Museum, Canada's largest Museum of natural history and world culture. ( Yes a rainy day, unfortunately the average temperatures of May of 15 deg to be seen nowhere and was a cold day with 6 deg C. My algonquin park group hike canceled due to this and that's how I ended up in ROM)

So huge that you can't roam without the map. SO make sure you pick one from the counter where you pay. With  5 stories, in natural history and  they have huge dinosaur collection ( big hit with Kids), gallery of birds, bats, insects, mammals, in world culture they have history and culture of Rome,Greece,Egypt,Nubia,Europe evolution, Africa, America,south asia, middle-east, Canada, first peoples special objects( first peoples are apparently the first people who arrived to Canada). 

At the entrance they have this huge dinosaur built under which the ROM employee help desks are there. ( They have lit up the dinosaur from its all paws with pink lights :D )

Right at the center they have many statues of Buddha. Thats me below one of them ( This one is from North China , made of Bronze, 16-17 century Ming dynasty) 

 

From here I straight away escalated to 4th floor which had fossils, insects,mammals, birds my favourite part. If you have to go through while museum in detail you would atleast need a week to complete it. ( I bet if you are a person like me, you would forget 90% of what you read).

Took the birds section first.. 

( Was too awed by this section that I forgot to note the names of the bird for my blog). This one was a huge bird that is found across Indian and arctic oceans. 

My heart is quenching for not buying that Polarising filter to get rid of the reflection on these glasses.. ;-(

OWL OWL OWL ... spotted a bird  that I know..:D

While I was heading from Birds section to the bats cave section, saw this kid asking his dad to get him touch that big crabbie... Poor dad. Sometimes kids can be a real pain in a**.

Some mammals in the pathway... ( Infact there is no pathway without any kind of display)

 

Just before the bat caves.. some mammals in the forest.. ( SOmetimes you catch funny fail moments on your camera unknowingly. Though not a huge fail but its funny how the lady is peeping into the forest to the right of the image :P ) 

Before I went into the bat caves, the miniaturization of a real place called St.clair cave in Jamaica. Quick facts the cave is about 3km long and home to 50 thousand bats. ( How stinky it might be?? )

Showing vampire bat species ( sucks blood from other animals. I dint know vampires were based on reality .. ) BTW is that guy smiling at me ? ;) 

Human inserted the dead pray into the mouth of the dead bat.. and kept it in the museum..

Me at the entrance of this dark cave which had cave-ey forest-ey bat sounded background music

. 

( Don't expect to see pictures of me showing my teeth :P  ) 

Inside the cave... ( my camera sucks at low light FYI: Nikon p600 ) 

The HERO pose :P 

National animal of India..

Random insects on the way...

At places, they kept these book racks filled with Magazines on the information about the artifacts and history on that floor. Kool man..

 Selfie break..

Going into the dinosaur gallery ..

Dino with longest neck - 8feet long..

Me .. as If I am into the Jurassic era :D :D

Dino fossil : 

A real 180 million year old Ichthyosaur fossil from Holzmaden,Germany . Unbelievable !!

They have few complete structures and fossils, few of them are real with some developments and few are completely artificially developed. 

TATTOOS : 

Observed: ?? Buddha on his back..

Who would do this ? the woman's is bearable. But the man's?? Is if a 3 year old kid is given a red marker to scribble ..

some more random artifacts in costume, history sections: 

 15th century porcelain  in middle-east

selfie break :P

Museum pathway into Chinese architecture....

Lord Buddha from China :

Porcelain imported into Europe from China in 15th century..

Real mummies from Egypt:

BRAINNNN?? YES YOU HEARD IT RIGHT. !!! Awesome mummification , they still have the brain and his liver..

They had these machines all over the museum. They would read out documentaries about the history related to the objects in that floor. Very helpful for someone like me who fail at history ..

DONEEEEEEE.... Back home with a 2.5$ icecream.

Can a outing be complete without a picture of flowers?? NO.. Here it goes.. in front of the apartment,. 

-sindhu