Toronto

Great, leisurely trip from home to a B and B, new to us, about five minutes' drive from G and J and L.

Supper together on Thursday evening and then, today, 18th September, in to Toronto by streetcar (trolley bus) and most of the day at the ROM for the Pompeii exhibition here and a wander through the other galleries.

The Pompeii exhibition was really interesting.  It was set up to give a really clear, vibrant view of this thriving, Roman city by the sea. 
I have to admit, I had always seen the Romans as being a rather dour, earnest sort of people.  But here they were, still not decadent, but definitely enjoying the good life.

The strange device top right is part of a plumbing system with cast bronze stop cocks attached to a lead junction box in order to control the water flow in to a house.

Bottom right is an "instant" water heater with a semicircular heater tank surrounding a fire hearth and attached to a reservoir for the liquid.  The tap on the right was for the user to run off the heated liquid!

I hated the armour for the gladiators and haven't any pictures of that, neither could I bring myself to photograph the casts of the many, many bodies found originally as cavities in the ash layer.  far too moving for snaps.

A really good exhibition which will stick in the memory and might even make me want to go to see the originals.

We then moved on to the mineral gallery - Canada is, after all, full of minerals!  And there, pride of place, was a copy of William Smith's geological map of Great Britain, the subject of the wonderful book "The Map that changed the World".  Here's a close-up of Bristol and environs!

The range and colour of the specimens on display was fabulous. 

The coin is about 18" across; it's a one million Canadian dollar coin.  As you can see, it's pure gold but it's a bit heavy for small change at 100kg.

Lila and Guy went swimming in the evening, but we weren't allowed to spectate.