On Monday, April 2 Paul headed to work while Cheryl, Glenn and I went to the Bata Shoe Museum. We had a free pass there from the library and it sounded like an interesting place to go. It wasn't very large, but it was filled with unique and interesting shoes and facts about footwear. We enjoyed it a lot and would probably go again!
We really liked this museum for several reasons. Not only did it have interesting shoes and footwear, but it had a lot of fun things for the kids. They gave the kids a bag with a little shoe keychain and a series of cards to play a sort of I-Spy or scavenger hunt. Glenn and Cheryl enjoyed doing that together in each exhibit.
They also had an area for the kids to color. They had lots of coloring pages with all kinds of different shoes. We spent awhile there--at the beginning and end of the museum.
But one of the best parts was this area where we could try on different styles of shoes! Most of them were pretty silly, so it made it a lot of fun. We had a good time laughing at each others' shoes and trying on the different styles. I think Sarah liked the pink and purple one the best. And Glenn...hmm, he wouldn't want me to say it, but I think he liked the red high heels the best!
Haha! Just kidding! It was probably the plain black ones.
After trying on shoes, we walked through the exhibits. It started with some very old and ancient footwear. One of them was also from the Toronto scavenger hunt! The human hair sock!
Glenn found the Chinese foot-binding the most disturbing. He did not like it at all, thinking about those poor women with tiny, broken, painful feet. I agree! I read a book about it once and I couldn't believe how tiny they wanted the women's feet to be. How sad!
As we walked through the museum, I took pictures of things that were interesting to me. Some of the footwear was so extravagant! I imagine that some were very difficult to walk in...
And some were just sort of cool--like the space boot and the deep-sea diving boot.
The last exhibit not only dealt with shoes, but other fashions. These fashions were mostly detrimental or harmful, but they didn't know it at the time. They had dresses died with poisonous things, and shoes that weren't good for the feet at all. I liked this quote--
"Shoemakers as a rule, it would be confessed, know little of the foot's anatomy."
I look at some of the shoes showcased here and sometimes in the stores today and think the same thing! How could anyone be comfortable in some shoes, I wonder!
So even though it was a small museum, we all really liked it and were glad we went. After we had gone through it once, I wanted to go through it again to look at some of the shoes more closely. The kids found it interesting and it was fun to see. Thanks Bata for a great day!
And that was our last day with Cheryl. We thoroughly enjoyed her visit and was so glad she came! We hope she enjoyed it as well. She left early the next day.
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