As opposed to yesterday, today was dry and HOT! For some reason, we didn't take our straw hats with us today which was a big mistake.
The first location which we visited was the market Mercato di Porta Palazzo; this is situated "behind and to the left" of Piazza Castello. We walked there reasonably quickly, including a stop for tea in the piazza. By the time we got to the market, it was exceedingly hot and there was very little shade. We walked around some of the market, looking for the weekly antiques part, but couldn't find it. Later on, I walked around the entire market but still could not find the antiques, so we cut our losses and left the market. We took shade near a tram stop for the No. 16; I saw that its route would take it to Mole Antonelliana which was on our 'must see' list. We waited patiently for the tram to arrive, then rode on it for about fifteen minutes.
After alighting from the tram, we stopped for a vegetarian lunch at a little cafe; this gave us a welcome break from the sun. From the cafe, it was a few minutes walk to the tower, although we had to wait about fifteen minutes in the sun before we could enter. After we entered the building, we waited (again) in the queue for the lift which would take us to the top of the building (or at least, as high as the lift goes!). The ascent, which lasted maybe two minutes, took us to an observation floor which allowed us to see all of Torino. Obviously this means less to us than to the locals, but it was still very interesting.
The building houses the national museum of cinema, which is mainly on the first and second floors. The first floor is historical, showing the various attempts at making moving pictures from the 19th century. This was interesting, but it paled into insignificance by the exhibits on the second floor. Here, it seemed as if the entire building was hollowed out. The main hall was filled with couches from which one could view two huge screens, one showing songs from classic films whereas the other showed parts of films in which their musical themes were played (see picture below).
Along the walls of the building was a continual walkway which had dozens of exhibits, clips of films showing how films used music and how music changed the films. One heard the music via personal headphones which played music according to where one was. Thus we had the early musicals ('Singing in the rain' and 'On the town' with Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Jules Munshin), musical documentaries ('Don't look back', 'Woodstock' with Jimi Hendrix, 'The Last Waltz'), later musicals ('Hair', 'The Rocky Horror show'), rock operas ('Tommy'), music videos, et cetera, et cetera. I very much enjoyed this!
We ended up spending several hours in the museum, so by the time we came out, the sun had lost its fury and we could walk happily back to our flat. When we got to the building of the flat, I discovered to my dismay that the electric key button which we needed to enter the building had disappeared from the key chain which was connected to a ring in my bag. I emptied the bag but couldn't find the button! Fortunately, we were also given a regular key for the main door, so we were able to open the door and get to our flat.
Dinner: fried salmon steaks and spaghetti.
For some reason, I was able both this morning and this evening to connect the video camera to the computer, download all the footage and convert it into a format which can be viewed on the computer. I don't know why this didn't work previously.
We haven't yet decided what to do tomorrow.
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