I woke to a brilliantly clear sky and the whole city covered in six or eight inches of snow. I checked out of Hotel Enza and wandered to the Piazza del Duomo for coffee and to see what it looked like covered in snow. Every street and sidewalk was thick with it.

The Duomo itself was crowned white, a lovely compliment to the Christmas decorations all around it.

Incidentally, coffee. COFFEE. Espresso here is so delicious that it is beyond all possible comprehension. A shot of straight espresso goes down like water; a cappuccino is positively ambrosial. I don’t know how I’ll ever drink coffee in America ever again.

Today (December 18th) is my birthday, so I thought I’d walk to Ponte Vecchio and have a little picnic. I didn’t bother with my map and just headed south to the river.

The Arno is the principal river in Tuscany and one of the largest in Italy, after the Tiber. About two thirds of Florence lies north of the Arno, where the major tourist areas are.

There are many, many bridges across it, but Ponte Vecchio is easy to spot; I just walked upstream (east) until I reached it.

Ponte Vecchio (lit. “Old Bridge”) is one of the few Florentine bridges not destroyed by the Germans during their retreat in WW2.

I bought a pizza margherita at a corner shop and walked around the neighborhood south of the bridge, looking in shop windows and watching other people, even locals, as enchanted by the snow as I was, take photos and throw snowballs.

Later, I ate a delicious ossobuco for lunch, followed by a big piece of tiramisu. I went to the station to validate my rail pass and head south to Siena, but the line was long and I missed the train by a few seconds (it pulled away literally as I was running to it). I waited around for the next one, but minutes before it would have arrived, the sign said it had been canceled – along with almost all of the other departures for the next hour! Not wanting to gamble on yet another, even later, train, I went in search of a hostel for the night. I’ll try my luck with Siena tomorrow.