Stair of Wonders, shaken or stirred

forget the dinosaurs at the ROM for a moment...my current favourite place in the Crystal is the staircase, which even has a name: The Stair of Wonders. sounds like a twenty-first century take on the nineteenth-century Cabinet of Curiosities, and appropriately enough, that's exactly what it is: different landings dedicated to peculiar arrangements of objects neatly lined up in angular vitrines (it's the Crystal after all.) Shells, glass paperweights, & bugs, between the second & third floors. Or, on the landing just up from the ground floor, there's Victorian finger bowls—they look like glass jellyfish—alongside beautifully-plumed stuffed birds, & small pickled vertebrates. intriguing.

i have to go back on the weekend though, because I missed the bottom landing, which apparently has mammoth tusks, and also because I want to try the new martini. the ROM has decided to create a martini to celebrate the Crystal. they haven't arranged any antique martini glasses in the stairwell (and i hope they aren't using any pickled vertebrates instead of olives in the martini) but they've spent a year working on this recipe. i'm not totally convinced by the sound of "The Architecture"; this ROM martini has Grey Goose vodka (i suppose that would be their sponsor), Hypnotique (which is blue), and Scotch. sounds a bit, uh, complicated...the passion fruit, the scotch (which kind? no one seems to know)...but maybe it will be as great a collision as the odd collections in the staircase.