Florence and an Italian Chiropractor

We slept in, then showered and had an egg breakfast.

For the past couple of weeks, Cristina has been dealing with back pain and dizziness. It has gotten progressively worse, so she finally decided to seek help. She found a chiropractor in Florence that went to school in Georgia, spoke English, and had an office just a mile or so from our Airbnb. Unfortunately, his website said it was appointment only, and she couldn't get her phone to make a call, so we just took our chances and walked in. He was kind enough to squeeze her in between scheduled clients. A rack-and-crack later, she was feeling much better. Not 100%, but better. He said she could come back later in the day for a check up and readjustment for no extra charge. And now that she had his What's App, she could contact him despite the international phone issues.

So Cristina decided to stay home to rest, and Bella and I took the tram into the city center. The adventure allowed us to work out the kinks of figuring out the tram, and navigating the city before Cristina joined us the next day. But it also meant we skipped things that we knew she'd want to do, like the churches and botanical gardens.

The first thing we did after getting off the tram was find coffee. A hipster little cafe even had iced coffee, which the barista made in front of us, violently shaking the espresso in a cocktail shaker with ice. I got a smoothie.

The next few hours were a hot, sunny blur of walking, looking at church exteriors, piazzas, and statues. Our attempt to find lunch meandered from idea to idea. We even sat down in one place, and then decided to leave (they hadn't even brought place settings yet, but we still felt a little guilty for leaving). Lots of people were walking around eating gigantic sandwiches wrapped in wax paper that looked good, and we finally found the place, but the lines were super long. We decided to commit, and then the line we were in got cut off because the place was closing. So we finally ate at a little café with a slightly annoyed server who, even though we ordered two sandwiches and a drink for me, said that Bella needed to order a drink also because "it's expected that you order a drink." But then a big family sat down beside us and he got busy with them, so he forgot to follow-up on the drink requirement. The sandwich was okay, but it didn't look as good as the ones we'd seen.

After lunch, we got to the central market, which is a big section of vendor booths, mostly selling the same stuff, lots of scarves, leather goods, and the typical souvenirs. The better part of the central market was the food court, which was indoors and had every of food you could want in Italy, for reasonable prices. We got gelato.

We took the tram back, and I made big veggie dinner of mashed potatoes, leeks, purple carrots, broccoli, and orange cauliflower. While I cooked, Cristina drove herself to the chiropractor for the follow-up adjustment around 6:30.

We ate dinner on the sofa while watching Storage Wars dubbed in Italian.

I blogged for a while before going to bed.