Mes Rêves #2

#2: Visit the Museo Nazionale del Cinema in Torino ✓ 

There is a really great bus company here in Europe called IDBus. As long as you have plenty of extra time to allow for long travel days, you can go to any of their seven stops very cheap. Lucky for me, one of those stops is Lyon.

It was because of IDBus that I even considered a trip to Torino. When I Googled it the first thing that came up with the Cinema Museum. I was sold.

Then I actually went to Torino and I seriously started to question my travel planning methods. I didn't know anything about this city except that it had a cinema museum. (It also turns out that the Olympics were here once upon a time, who knew?) I wandered around for a while, but it was snowing... and when I say snowing I mean snowing... and all I was wearing was a fleece. Serious lack of judgment on my part.

Luckily I spent most of my day in a museum.

The first floor of the museum was all about light and how light passes through mirrors and how the camera was invented... it was sooo boring. It was mostly just looking at pictures and reading - in Italian - about scientific stuff.

I paid for this? This is one of my study abroad goals? This is all I could think as I meandered around the museum. I didn't want to leave, though, because it was still snowing and I had no where else to go.

Then I made it to the second floor and suddenly my whole view changed. This museum is amazing! They had movie props and memorabilia and even a miniature set that had been used in Jurassic Park.

They also had a lot of interactive stations. Most used green screens to add you to film scenes, including the Yellow Brick Road scene from The Wizard of Oz.

They explained how movies are made, which I loved. They had sets built to look like movies that you could walk through. They also have one of the largest collections of movie posters. The entire third floor is just filled with movie posters.

In the middle of the museum is an open area with two giant screens playing scenes from movies. The best part, though, was the chairs that were set up so you could watch the movies. They laid all the way back, had speakers right by your ears so you could listen to the movie, and were so comfortable. Every cinema should be set up this way, and every museum, too. It's the perfect way to rest your feet after walking all around the museum.

I ended my trip to the museum with an elevator ride to the top of the Mole Antonelliana (that's the official name of the cinema museum building). The view of Torino was beautiful.

Oh, and one more fun fact about the museum? The place mats at the restaurant are screens that scroll through movie clips and information about movies from the early 1900s until now.

I will never again question my questionable travel planning methods.