Grosseto

One of our goals this trip was to start the process of finding dentists, doctors etcetera. We'd been working on it slowly until my back decided it was time to find someone sooner rather than later. So today was my appointment with Melissa's osteopath / physiotherapist in Grosseto. I scheduled it with him directly via text message. Awesome, right?! He had just moved his office from Follonica to Grosseto, but Melissa assured me that he was worth the 35-40 minute drive, which to put in context is a drive across town in Las Vegas. 

We were unsure about the parking situation, though to be completely transparent, in Italy we are always unsure about the parking situation, LOL. So our plan was to park at the train station, walk to the town center, then walk to the appointment. What we didn't anticipate is that the train station lot would be full, not at all like the time we parked at the Follonica station. Which in hindsight, considering that Grosseto is the provincial capital, I'm not sure why we would have assumed it would be similar to Follonica. At any rate, we pulled into the grocery store parking lot next door to regroup and find a bathroom. We followed a lady into what we assumed was the bathroom. We waited behind the first door for her to come out. Imagine her surprise to open the door and find herself having to squeeze into our shared space. And on top of that, share it with a couple of foreigners. But to her credit, she recovered quickly, gave us the key and explained that we needed to take it back to the casa. At least that was what I heard, which made no sense to me, return the key to the house? So I just returned it to one of the cashiers, which turned out to be a lucky guess because what she really said was cassa which is the cash register or checkout counter. It's true what they say about learning words in context because I'm never going to forget that one!

Anyways, with the bathroom break out of the way, we were safe to check out the store. It was lucky we did because we found not one but two kinds of tortilla chips. For those of you who don't know, if left to his own devices, Ira would eat chips and salsa everyday. Needless to say, he's been on the hunt and today he hit the jackpot. Of course, we bought both flavors, for research's sake. Giddy with success, we stowed our loot and then headed off to the city center.

The first thing that caught our eye were the shop doors. Some were very colorful and fun. Here are a couple of our favorites.

I later found out that after Covid, many of the shops closed down and so to combat the emptying historic center a local art collective had been inviting street artists from all over Italy to turn drab shop and garage doors into vibrant art. What a great idea! We certainly appreciated their efforts.

I'm not sure if the 3-D piece below was part of that project, but it caught my eye just the same. This was the door to the access panel near what I can only assume is a steak house.

And below, a pub, right?

We wandered around a little more during the 'quiet hour' when most of the shops in Italy close for the lunch break and siesta. We found our way to the Duomo di Grosseto or the Cathedral of San Lorenzo.

It was hard to ignore these. From this vantage point these characters were particularly eye-catching. 

From here we went to the city's archaeological museum. It's putting it lightly to say we were surprised to find this collection of ancient marble statues in the basement. We were the only ones there and had we dared to, we could have reached out and touched them. 

I love the detail on the skirt on this one.

I also like how they displayed some of the statues with photos from the dig.

After the museum it was time for my appointment. It was a brand new office that Lorenzo had just moved into a few days before. So new that his name wasn't yet on the buzzer outside. So after I sent him a text, he came out to grab us. We waited in the lobby until he called us in at the exact appointment time. He spent time discussing my history and my current issues and then gently worked on my spine from top to bottom for about an hour. I was so impressed. I'm not even going to tell you how little it cost. Needless to say, it was two-thirds what we pay in San Diego for a 15 minute appointment. Crazy!

So you'll realize how behind I am with my blogs when I tell you that after we parked the Smart and were walking back to our apartment the church bells started ringing. This is not an unusual occurrence by any means, but the bells kept on ringing. And then I checked the time and it wasn't time for mass so something else was up. We both guessed that perhaps we had a new pope. We arrived back in our apartment just in time to catch the tail end of Papa Leone's speech on Vatican Live. To hear him speak beautiful Italian and Spanish, we didn't have to be religious to affected by the country's emotions. It was amazing to be here, an experience that we will always remember.

A dopo!