We’re back in Tübingen after a week-long trip to Italy. We visited 4 Italian cities in 9 days, which is not quite the 10 countries in 21 days I did on one of those marathon bus trips many, many years ago, but it was still a lot more that we crammed into one week than we’d normally do. 

Although that does make it sound a bit more chaotic than it really was, since the 4 cities were all ones we’d been to before: Verona, Rovereto, Bolzano and Venice.  Our main focus on the trip was visiting with friends and not doing general sightseeing, except in Venice where we just spent 2 days on our own with no particular agenda other than eating well and enjoying being in Venice. I also got to spend my birthday last Monday in Verona again, where for the second year in a row I got to eat my favorite Veronese dish: bigoli con ragu d’asino. Yum. Thanks for all the birthday wishes, everybody (and a special thanks to our friends M&S and members of their family for the surprise party on Sunday!

Now, I know, what you really what to see are some photos from the trip, right? Although, if you’ve been a regular reader of the blog, you’re probably not really expecting any photos today,  knowing that I will probably not as yet have sorted through all my photos. And, that is indeed true, despite my having taken my iPad on the trip so that I could try using it to sort and organize my photos each evening while we were gone.

As if that was really going to happen, of course. Turning a year older has not made me more organized. Not that I expected it to… 😉

So today I just have one photo to represent a recurring theme for us from Venice:  we again had some good luck running across things that were both interesting and unexpected.

For example, we happened upon a little road-side stand/bar that sold good versions of the typical-in-Venice little crustless white bread triangle sandwiches with mayonnaise-based fillings. This stand was near the port for the car ferry on the Lido, and we found it  just when we were getting hungry for lunch and were facing a kilometer walk back to town to find food.

And on a different day we had stumbled upon an interesting photography exhibit  at a gallery we’d never been to before, which happened to be just next to the cafe where we’d enjoyed both the view and the glasses of prosecco on our last trip (and which we were seeking out to enjoy on this trip, too).

Now, Chris often takes really nice photos of the intriguingly complex patterns formed by the large clumps of seaweed floating in the Venice lagoon. BTW, I call it seaweed – I don’t know if technically that’s correct or not, but it’s the clumps of big plant things that float in the water there.

But it doesn’t really matter what it’s called, since Chris takes photos of that, but I don’t, so it isn’t an integral part of my photo. While waiting for Chris to finish his seaweed shots in one spot, I was looking at the water and happened to spot an interesting pattern in the water itself. The color of the water was a bit unusual, perhaps in part because the air that day was both cloudy and incredibly hazy. I took the shot, certain that there was an interesting pattern there, even if in the available light that day the pattern was a little bit murky and indistinct.

Today, while adjusting the contrast on the photo on my computer — not changing anything in the photo other than making the darks darker and the lights lighter — I saw something emerge from the shape of the waters:

The Lady of the Lagoon

The Lady of the Lagoon (cropped)

Do you see a face there with the head slightly tilted to the left? I do. OK, well, I do always see faces in everything, of course. But I didn’t actually take this photo because I spotted the face at the time. Having a seemingly  “random” pattern resolve itself into this “Lady of the Lagoon” photo was an unexpected bit of good luck. I guess those serendipitous moments in Venice continue here in Tübingen … at least when looking back at the trip to Venice. Fun!

More photos from the trip there and elsewhere still to come…

Just not today. 😉