Chianti Wine, Tuscan Oil and Naked (Marble) Men

Wow. That last post was pretty brutal.

I pledge to do better.

Well, to try to do better anyway.

My love affair with Florence has continued and, thanks to a whole lot of wine, may actually have intensified some.

On Friday Mum and I went on a bike tour/ wine tasting/ olive oil tasting. Despite my almost non-existant cardiovascular fitness, I had an amazing time. Chianti is a gorgeous area and the wine (and olive oil) we sampled were pretty much to die for (even the white, and I'm not usually into white!).

The only downside was that Florence is in a valley, so no matter what, if you want to get out you need to go up. And up. And up. All the way up to the Piazzale Michelangelo, to be precise. And then further up. This was all fine and good (I figured that I was doing my heart some good while at the same time crawling out of the carb coma I've been in for the past week and a half) until about seven pm when the lactic acid started to attack my poor quads. A word to the wise here: don't forget to drink loads of water and walk it off! I'm fairly anal about following this rule with my ponies but for some reason I figured that I myself would be immune. As it turns out, this is not true. Eventually (thanks to watchtvsitcoms.com) I fell asleep and (thank God) when I woke up, no pain remained but that which was caused from sitting on a man's mountain bike seat for seven hours.(which is, I may point out, not a great idea either...)

We met some pretty great people in our small group (almost all Canadians!) and it was great to watch how the sunshine, the "Tuscan Sun" and, primarily, the wine, took an already cheerful and chatty group to the next level of comaraderie!

Today was our last day here so we decided to take a quick trip out to Siena after an even quicker visit to the Galleria dell'Academia. Siena was very impressive, but I with I could say the same for the gallery.

Housing a respectful collection of thirteenth century paintings (think, "Madonna and Child" or "The Crucifiction", multiplied by ten on every wall of almost every room), a room chock full of nineteenth century plaster moulds of original marble statues and a hallway of *possible* Michelangelos, the main attraction is, not surprisingly, the original David.

Traditionally, thirteenth century art is often shockingly grotesque, however it creates an impressive contrast when coupled with David. He is at once bright, self-assured and pensive in a room surrounded by paintings which are dark and condemning. Although I found the overall collection a bit disappointing, I enjoyed analyzing the museological aspects of the gallery. Because I'm a huge geek. Check.

Anyway, as I'd mentioned, Siena was lovely. There's nothing that's a "must see" so to say, it's just that the entire city is beautiful. It's one of those laid back, relaxed, picturesque sort of places (despite the bus loads of tourists) that makes you wonder about the Italy of times long past.

I'm a geek, we've already covered this.

So we're off to Rome tomorrow; our last stop and another of my favourite places. Although I doubt we'll have free internet access in our room, I will blog at least once about The Eternal City. Pinky swear.

ps: it's Sunday by the time I actually got around to posting this and, because everything's closed, we headed to good old Mickey D's for coffee (which is sacrilege seeing as we're in Italy, but who am I to demand decent coffee on the day of rest?) and, much to my surprise, what do I see but MacDonald's CAFE?!?! That's right, a cafe. With real coffee and pastries and an espresso machine... I think my brain just exploded...