Toronto - Tall Ship Kajama

http://www.tallshipcruisestoronto.com/

I don't remember for sure how I became aware of the Kajama. It might have been through the Travelocity suggested activities for the area, or something like that. I am a pretty easy mark for boats.

Of course, around any famous water, and Lake Ontario counts, you will have several cruise options. For the Bay of Islands, I wish we had not taken the fast boat tour. For Lake Ontario, I was pretty happy with the Kajama.

The tall ship Kajama is a three-masted schooner that worked as a cargo ship from 1930 to 1998, and was then restored for cruising. It's hard to believe that something that looks so historic is actually so recent, and that you might have seen a three-masted schooner used for cargo in 1997, but that just shows that I don't know very much about shipping.

Sailing does not require as much crew as leaving port, so they asked for a few volunteers with raising the sails, and I helped. I was the only female to volunteer, but at least one of the regular crew was a girl (they were all young college students). Anyway, ship work is not just man's work.

The cruise itself was pretty peaceful. There was one moment where we were kind of close to shore where I could hear music coming from a fairground or something. Actually, it was the Finn Brothers, and I suddenly had a wild thought that what if they were in town, but it appears to have been a recording.

The boat has a lot of character, and if you can go out on one of the Great Lakes you should do it. This is a reasonable option.

Toronto - Royal Ontario Museum

http://www.rom.on.ca/en

The Royal Ontario Museum was in the CityPass, and I'm glad it was because it was a pretty good museum.

For the main collections I remember dinosaurs, minerals, and some items that I thought were Egyptian but could have been Nubian. Exhibitions were spacious and well lit, which I thought helped give a better sense of things.

So I would say that the permanent collections are worthwhile, but part of keeping a museum a vibrant place is that there are temporary exhibits that change and give a reason for return. When I went, it was an exhibit on portraits, and one of the things they had set up was postcards and drawing materials, and you could draw your own portrait and submit it. Several were already on the walls.

That activity drew people in. There were people busily working while I was there, and many submissions in the depository for them, which was clear so you could see, as well as those that were already on display. That has always struck me as a way to invite the public to connect to art, not just as a viewer but as an artist.

Currently there is an exhibit using the photography of a local artist to explore every corner of the museum, but as part of exploring the city. That also seems like it will work well for fostering connection. This is important. It is good to be able to appreciate objects in a museum, but if that helps us appreciate what we find out of the museum, if we learn to see better, then it becomes something more.

I cannot comment on the Crystal, which now forms the main entrance, because it was still under construction when I was there, and it was actually kind of a joke on whether they would ever finish. However, it looks like it only took them another year, plus some time to work out the leak issues.

Toronto - Bata Shoe Museum

http://www.batashoemuseum.com/

The Bata Shoe Museum was not featured in It's an Aardvark Eat Turtle World and it was not in the Toronto City Pass, so it would have been very easy for me to have never known about. Fortunately, it was featured on the double-decker bus tour, and the construction of the building alone, designed to be reminiscent of a shoebox, lured me in.

I know there are people who are wild about shoes. I am not one of those people, therefore this review is based on the strength of the museum itself, and not as a special interest observer. Though, if your special interest is shoes, I do not doubt there is a level of ecstasy that this museum will provide, and that's cool.

For everyone else, the strength of the museum has to be not just in its collection, but in how the collection is presented and made relevant. This was several years ago, and removed from that, I remember the historical development of the shoe including types of shoes used for specific purposes that I would never have thought about without going.

That is pretty good, but I also happened to run into this article this week:

http://www.macleans.ca/culture/arts/deadly-victorian-fashions/

Fashion is not the only way of looking at shoes, but it is a relevant one, and that exhibit sounds fascinating, both historical and timely. So even though in my initial plan I was going to do the Royal Ontario Museum this week and the Bata Shoe Museum next week, I changed it so that if I could possibly offer a little signal boost to this exhibit four days before it opens, I would.

Fashion Victims: The Pleasures and Perils of Dress in the 19th Century opens June 18th and will run through June 2016.

If you get a chance to go, you should.

Toronto - CN Tower

http://www.cntower.ca/intro.html

I found I did not take any pictures of CN Tower. I did take one from up top, but it is night and you cannot see anything.

I had hoped that the recent cracking event at the Willis Tower would make this more exciting, but it's not, really. If you have a material that you designed to be clear and strong, and you are constantly going to have shoes scuffing it and fingerprints accumulating, it would be normal to put some sort of easily changed covering, and the easy change would require it to be less durable. This is not to say that it wouldn't have been scary to be there when it was happening.

So I am left with not being impressed with tall buildings, and feeling like I am kind of deficient in that. It actually might have started in Toronto. This was my first really high tower. I have never gone up in the Space Needle, though I have seen it nearby. So, I went in, and it was very high, and I made a point of eating in the restaurant there, which I can't recommend, and I stood on the glass and looked down, and it was all kind of underwhelming.

About a month later I had a one night layover in Frankfurt, and saw two of them. One would have been the Europaturm, 331 meters high. I can't find a reference to another one, but I swear I saw two. The other may not have been tall enough to be famous. Anyway, I remember realizing that this type of structure isn't really that uncommon.

(And hey, with the Willis Tower, it is a whole building, which is impressive, but also, they have another tall building with an observation deck.)

Still, it's something you do. The height of radio towers serves a communication purpose, and if you can combine that with a view, it makes sense. If I get a chance, I am sure I would go up in the Space Needle. The CN Tower is the tallest free-standing structure in the Western Hemisphere, and has been declared one of the modern Seven Wonders of the World by the American Society of Civil Engineers. I know these things are impressive, even if I cannot feel it.