I was jetlagged after the long trip, and when I arrived at my hotel around two on the 16th, I did my best to stay awake until a reasonable bedtime. I drank the best espresso of my life at a rough-edged bar near the hotel, and then took a long walk through the city, counting on the exercise and the cold to keep me awake.

Florence is beautiful. I am not kidding. It is also quite small–the streets are narrow, and the buildings jam together like a well-played game of Tetris. It’s possible to walk by a great number of famous, historical sites in a matter of minutes, though that assumes you don’t stop to look. There are churches everywhere, as well as restaurants, bars and caffeterie, shops full of clothing and accessories, newsstands, hotels.

A cultural note: the “bar” in Italy is not primarily a liquor-based establishment, though all have rows of bottles of all kinds of alcohol on display. You are as likely to go to a bar for your morning cappuccino as you are for a drink in the afternoon.

I collapsed into bed at around 19:00, slept deeply until about 1:00, and then fitfully again until about 6:00 the next morning. It was cold. My journal entry after my morning walk consisted entirely of: “IT IS FUCKING COLD, WHAT IS THIS I DON’T EVEN”. Fortunately it warmed up by a few degrees when I went out in the afternoon to bring my luggage to my school, but that was when the snow really started to come down.

The dark green shutters on beige or saffron walls are a motif throughout the city. When I first arrived at my hotel, I thought, “oh, that’s a very distinctive style – it’ll be easy to find my way back to this place.” I was wrong. Almost every building in Florence has these shutters.

Precipitation was halfhearted throughout the early part of the afternoon, but when I reached Piazza della Santissima Annunziata, the snow began in earnest. In minutes, the streets and sidewalks were white and slippery.

Scooters and motorbikes are ubiquitous. Streets are lined with parked bikes, and packs of them go buzzing with suicidal velocity down every road, cars (and pedestrians) be damned.