Torino catch up

We've wandered around heaps in Torino and checked out different parts of the city as well as going to a few museums.  We went back to the Egyptian Museum -to see the second and third floors this time.  The museum is fantastic and will be an incredible experience when the new part of the museum is opened in a year or two. If you are interested in things Egyptian, it is worth going to Torino just to visit the museum.

The second floor is completely black with  mirrored walls, it is very cleverly structured -I think that I read somewhere that the display was done by a set designer -it certainly has been done by people with that sort of expertise.  Sculptures etc are spot lit and positioned near angled mirrors to create an amazing scene.  We were lucky to have the place to ourselves a few times as  other tourists  seemed to make very speedy visits -they were probably burned out after the first floor.

During the week we've also visited the Mole Antoneliana which has the Cinema Museum.  It is an amazing building  -we took the lift to a viewing area and checked out what we could of Torino -it was a very foggy day so we couldn't see the mountains, etc but the fog gave the city an eeriness.

The museum has an impressive collection of historical exhibits covering the development of cinema  and these are all well displayed with many interactive exhibits. People interested in film and cinema would really love this.

Model from "Gremlins"

Set model from "Jurassic Park"

The are also a number of displays which are representative of film sets (a few of actual movies etc  the others just representative of their era). While the  sets are well done and the building itself is amazing, we were a little underwhelmed by the sets and were much more interested in the historical stuff. 

We've enjoyed Torino and after 10 days have a bit of a better understanding about the place.
We found that in general, people here aren't as welcoming or interested in tourists as other places that we've been and some of the people who have chatted with us have turned out to have come from other parts of Italy.  People are very polite but not generally engaging.

We did quite a bit of shopping but none of the places were set up for tax free rebates - we stopped asking in the end. Tomorrow we check out of our comfortable hotel and head for Milano, then on Thursday we  go back to Rome.