Stefano did make it home after all on Friday night, the night of the heaviest snowfall on record (in Florence) in the last 50 years.

First, though, he went out for dinner near his office together with a group of stranded colleagues. He managed to snag a hotel room, but by the time he’d finished dinner, he noticed that the streets were clear enough, so he called me to tell me he was on his way home.

He arrived after 1 AM…with scary stories of city buses stuck in the middle of the road, together with abandoned vehicles and motorbikes…

My neighborhood got about 10 inches of snow, more or less. It is a bit colder here than in the center of the city. Today, that is, two full days after the storm, we are still snowed in.

No ploughs have come here to clear away the snow, which means that I cannot move my car. The same is true for most of my neighbors, who don’t have snow tires or four-wheel drive…Our street is still filled with snow…amazing. Some melted today…not enough, though…

At any rate, yesterday morning Stefano and I put on our snow attire and set off on a walk around the neighborhood.It was a beautiful sunny day, as you can see. 

What we really wanted to do, actually, was try to get up to the Piazzale Michelangelo, which would have offered us a unique panoramic view of the city, but we soon realized that there were no buses in our neighborhood. Not one. I later heard on the news that only about 30% of the bus service in Florence had been restored.

As a result, much to our chagrin, we have no panoramic photos of Florence under the snow…! Uffaaa…

But we did take a nice long walk in the snow, and here are some of the photos I took, including one of a pine tree that had collapsed onto the roof of a row house…not too far from where we live.

And then there is one of my Piccolo staring at the snow from my study window…

And one that shows an eerily deserted street in my neighborhood…This is VERY unusual for a busy Saturday morning. All the cars in these photos are parked…

All this snow threatened to put a bit of a damper on a friend’s plans. For weeks now she had been planning to hold her annual Xmas card-playing party on December 18th…Yesterday!

For the above-stated reasons, I couldn’t use my car, and the same was true of other friends. One of my close friends was able to free her car and started to drive over to pick me up…but she ended up being stranded on an icy street and barely managed to pull over and park her car. She was about halfway to my house…

For once, I was happy that we all have cell phones! 🙂

In the end, another friend and I met up near my house and set off together on snow-covered, rather icy sidewalks…carefully carrying about a ton of my homemade cookies (the ones you see in the photo are a few of the leftovers). We trudged on for about a kilometer before getting picked up by yet another friend who has a four-wheel drive vehicle and had picked up my stranded friend on the way…

What an adventure…

We all finally gathered together, safe and sound and laughing, at my friend’s house. We began playing cards a bit later than planned and also decided to end our evening earlier than usual, right after dinner, so that we could all make it safely back home.

As it was, even with his powerful four-wheel drive vehicle, my friend wasn’t able to drive up the slight hill leading to my street, so I had to walk part of the way home last night, which turned out to be absolutely wonderful…

So quiet…So peaceful…A sort of mist had arisen, and it enveloped me like a reassuring blanket…Oh, I am not very good with words, but I can tell you that I felt much like Lucy must have felt when she first entered the seemingly peaceful, snowy world of Narnia…

It was magical…

A magical end to an adventurous, and fun!, evening with my friends…