Toronto: Food, Art and Architecture

Well, we've arrived at the US Social Forum — more about that later. We spent Sunday evening and much of the day Monday in Toronto. As with our last trip to Toronto, we stayed in Chinatown and wandered the shops, ate out, and made one museum visit.

Both kids received an official Adventurous Eating Award for the Toronto stay. Sunday night, inspired by a conversation in the car with the kids about the appropriateness of using your hands to eat, we found an Ethiopian restaurant so the kids could dispense with utensils while eating some spicy lamb, mixed vegetable stew and a kind of thick puree of split garbanzo beans. Then Monday for lunch we found a good cheap place that served dim sum all day; we filled up on dumplings and steamed buns and such.

Last time we were in Toronto we visited the Art Gallery of Ontario, with its new Frank Gehry architectural extension. This time we visited the Royal Ontario Museum, which also has a funky modern architectural extension poking out from a more traditional building:


The spiky triangular bits had a funky staircase inside:


There was an exhibit by some Romanian artist who does installations in which he draws on the walls with markers. A lot of it was, to be honest, a bit much crossed with not really very much, but I guess a few of the drawings had some charm and insight:


There was also a cool exhibit of gems and minerals and such, including this natural sheet of copper:


But I think my favorite was the obelisk in the lobby, inscribed with the names of financial supporters of the museum, which lit up when you touch it, and which provided kids (not just ours) with all kinds of entertainment: