Florence in the Winter

It was snowing last night in Florence for the first time in years.  I had been watching the weather reports religiously for the last week hoping that their forecast would hold and some of that fun white snow would come our way, and look what happened.  This is the first time in years that I've been in a city while its snowing, and I couldn't wait to go out and see it for myself. 

Dragging Rachael along, we put on all of cold weather cloths and headed out to enjoy the city.  Heading down the street towards the city center the first thing we noticed was the lack of people.  This place was abandoned.  There were the occasional group of young adults running about, but nearly everyone who was out was American.  Next in our observations was that all of the shops and many of the restaurants were closed up for the night.   The entire city had shut down on the account of the snow.  I have never been on Corso with that few of people out.  Usually it is littered with people all throughout the day, but apparently Italians do not have the same affinity for snow.  Granted it was rather chilly out, the temperature was floating around 1-2'C.

Wandering around it was interesting to see the buildings begin to collect a dusting of snow.  Seeing Brunelleschi's dome painted white was quite memorable.  The snow was extremely heavy and wet.  Falling in large chunks rather than flakes.

This morning I woke hoping to find the city buried under the snow.  Unfortunately this was not the case, but there was still some traces of the snow left on the ground and on the roof tops.  So, after getting ready we headed out again to see what there was too see.  What we saw was mostly our breath because it was freakin' cold out there.  It was still relatively empty for such a touristy city on a Saturday.

After a quick bite while we warmed up in Il Ghibellini I made the precarious journey up to piazzale Michelangelo to get a view of the city while it still had traces of snow.  The piazza was crowed with photographers, like myself, of all levels.  I'm certain that there are bound to be very similar postings on many facebook pages in the next few days.  I guess I'm no better though, and I can't blame them.  It was rather pretty.