Getting our groove back, Saturnia 2022

Cascate del Mulino, near Saturnia Italy, April 2022

My friend Kina and I have known each other a really long time. We met in our early 20s at a really entertaining customer service job (think Superstore). We really got to know each other as we spent countless hours clocking in and out and listening to excuses for why “Customer A” needed to return an iron that he’d never used (which was mysteriously scorched beyond recognition) or why “Customer B” lost her receipt but she bought her necklace before it was on sale and demands the full price cash back. My first impression of Kina was that she was a bit of a snob and probably out of my small town girl league. We bonded over the humor of the daily sad tales, became fast friends and soon discovered that we were from neighboring small Texas towns.

We had so much fun! It was the 80s, we were in our early 20s, barely legal drinking age. Every Thursday and Saturday night we hit the clubs and broke some hearts and had ours broken a time or two.

For Kina’s 60th, we took this epic trip to Santorini and then wound up with a week in Tuscany before we went back to the reality of work and that other bothersome adult stuff. Kina found this place on Instagram and it looked amazing. It’s in a part of Tuscany I’ve never visited (the Maremma). If you Google Maremma, you’ll find that

“Maremma is a large area in southern Tuscany”. It stretches between the provinces of Livorno and Grosseto. “Maremma is unique because of the variety of its territory: blue sea, long beaches, black rock, hills covered with woods, marshes and flat lands, green hills and natural thermal baths”.

We took the train from Florence to Grosseto, rented a car in Grosseto and drove the easy hour to our hotel, Saturnia Tuscany Hotel. This was a great location to base out of as it’s just a few miles up the road from the thermal baths, Cascate del Mulino.

We did a drive-by to see how crowded the place was and check out the scene. There’s a great perspective from the south that you won’t want to miss.

If you park in the general parking lot (go past the baths maybe 1/4 mile), you can easily walk on the paved pedestrian path to the entrance. There is no entry fee. There is a fee to park ($9 euros). We went on a cool, cloudy day in mid-April in the early afternoon and the place was still packed. The parking lot had ample parking spaces so we decided to go for it. Here’s the tricky part. There is nowhere to change into your swimsuit. So we did what everyone else was doing–we changed in the car. Imagine you have two 60 year old American women. We are not tiny people. We are in a very small rental car. We have our front seats pushed as far back as they will go and are attempting to a) get out of our walking around in a Tuscan village clothes and b) not appear on some Instagram post about grannies gone wild or something equally horrifying.

At first we were trying to put up towels and shirts to shield what we were doing but when you looked around, everyone was in their car doing the same thing–looking very sheepish and pretending not to notice anyone else. There were some people that were just openly dressing next to their cars. These were people who you mostly did not want to see nude, but I applaud their bravado. It was fun … and funny and felt really completely anonymous and I’d do it again in a minute.

Once we got that sorted, we were off to the waters. We donned our hotel bathrobes and grabbed towels and cell phones and trekked to the thermal baths. It was cool outside (60 F 16 C). As we approached we see people in various stages of undress and others in jackets. We had read about the tiny red worms that are everywhere in the water and were a bit concerned about that situation but…maybe it was the grappa, maybe it was just a quest–whatever it was that kept us going, I’m so glad we did.

The waters were warm and amazing. Everyone was having a good time and friendly and there was plenty of room to find our own little special spot to soak in the waters that have been soothing bodies since back to the Etruscan times. We could have stayed forever.

Tips for travelers:

• take a robe or something warm for the walk from the baths to the car
• wear water shoes or slides or be prepared to walk on pebbly rocks in the water
• ignore the red worms–if I hadn’t read about them I would have thought they were weeds or something–and they were completely harmless
• ask your hotel if they have a discount voucher for parking. Ours did.
• go early (like sunrise) or late afternoon to beat the large crowds or just enjoy the people watching
• take a waterproof bag for your phone or for anything you don’t want to get wet (like your towels or robes)–lesson-learned
• drink grappa (it makes the whole experience so much more fun)