Is this really only Day 3?

I feel like been on vacation now for about 6 months.  Not complaining; that's a good feeling.  I'm just amazed at how quickly we got our sea legs and can find our way around this city. 

Today we visited the Uffizi Museum, touted as the most frequently visited museum in Italy.  It's big, it's full of art.  After a while, you get dizzy looking at all the art.  But we did see "Venus on a Clam Shell", uh, sorry, "The Birth of Venus" by Botticelli.  And the portraits of the Duke & Duchess of Urbino, which I felt needed a little pick-me-up.  So I added my personal touch while Gene took a photo:

Just doin' my best Cumberbatch.  Kind of adds to the whole atmosphere, I think.

 

After our museum visit and a swell lunch outdoors at a café on the circumference of the museum square, we refound the pasta shop and bought some spinach & cheese ravioli, some meat sauce and some pesto sauce.  Cost us a whopping 7.70 euros (about $8.35), so our local meal in is set. 

 

Then we were off to a wine tour of two Chianti vineyards.  Wine tours are fun:  drive for a half-hour, drink 4 samples of whatever, drive 15 more minutes, drink 3 more samples of whatever and enjoy some lovely countryside scenery:

 

 

Then we drove another 15 minutes and were able to spend 20 minutes wandering around the small Italian village of Greve, where Gene bought two more t-shirts combining bicycling & evolution and I found a new mortar and pestle carved from the wood of an olive tree.  A splendid addition to what will eventually be my new kitchen.

 

When the tour bus returned to our starting point, we were off to the grocery store.  The good thing about staying in an apartment instead of a hotel is that you get access to a full-kitchen and can cook breakfast and have evening snacks.  You also get to shop in a local grocery store to stock your kitchen.  And stock up we did.  We also learned that in Italy, you are supposed to weigh your vegetables and fruit and get a label from the machine that you put on your vegetables and fruit with the price, so when you get to the check-out counter, the cashier just punches in the number and everything moves along nicely.

 

Instead our poor cashier had to keep going back to the weighing machine and looking at us with exasperation.  We just kept apologizing and he was nice enough to say "it's okay" -- in English even.

 

We arrived at the apartment after a pretty long day.  Not a whole lot to report, but a lot of fun was had. 

 

We're off to Venice tomorrow.  No tour.  We're just planning to go to the train station, buy a ticket, ride the rails to Venice and walk around.  See what we can see, maybe get a gondola ride, have a meal and take the train back.

 

Steps today:  17,964

Total to date:  49,932