I hadn’t been to a Museum in a really long time. The last one I had been to was on an island in the middle of the reservoir of a Dam! Yes it was! The island used to be the top of a hill! Yes!

The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) had no such characteristics. It is in the middle of the city, has a very modern design and it is much bigger than the one on the island. Approaching the ROM without preparation can give you a headache. The outer walls are at weird angles that force you mind to bend in all the wrong directions and your perception to bend backward onto itself.

It doesn’t stop once you are inside. After a perfectly normal lobby and entrance you are confronted with the facade of a building that ideally should have been on the outside of the ROM and not on the inside, and you wonder… Will I have to pay to enter that too? Once you are inside the building on the inside of the ROM, things are back to normal are you can start seeing the dead and weird stuff.

Before you start, you really must prioritize. You can easily spend the whole day at the ROM and still have stuff to see after. That is if you are like my wife and like to read all the placards. If you are like me, you’re okay. The sections of the ROM will take you through dinosaur bones (always popular), shrunken heads, various civilizations, weapons, art, architecture and a whole lot more. The few kilometers that you may walk in the ROM will overload your mind (If you go reading all the placards). If you are like me, you’re okay.

There is also a section that has been made into a mini-rain forest and as soon as I got into that area I felt like I had landed up in Calcutta. The humidity was maintained at a really high level and it was hot too.

There are always a lot of kids there so be prepared for various noises that kids make. There will also be museum employees standing at various places giving you interesting tidbits on the exhibits that you are looking at. They all generally look like people who might have earlier worked with the museum but are now retired. They were always elderly.

The cafeteria is another place that you will need to go to. A break will definitely be required. Once you are done with the exhibits, you can go over to the gift shop and look at overpriced souvenirs vaguely related to the exhibits in the museum.

All in all, I had a good time looking at weapons collection and the samurai outfits and some of the miniature displays. There is something to catch any ones fancy there, if you don’t waste your time reading all the placards.