A Day with Dali

After spending the past 7 weeks recuperating from knee replacement surgery, I was feeling good enough to get out.  And we just happened to have a free Marriott night that was expiring. So, to St. Pete we went for a local vacation weekend.

We started the adventure at Mazzaro's which is always a fun food shop where you can't leave without interesting and delicious thing to eat and drink. We escaped with wine, olives, bread, cheese and chocolate. Really, what else is there worth eating! And on to our next adventure - the new Dali Museum.

Behind the museum, in the park...complete with a maze!

I was excited to see the new building and its somewhat famous helical staircase.  Dali was fascinated with spirals and the double helical shape of the DNA molecule.  This theme shows up in his word, and in the gardens behind the museum.

staircase from ground floor

3rd floor view of the top of the staircase

The building walls were built to withstand cat 5 storms while the 18 inch thick storm glass holds up to cat 3. So what happens if the glass breaks?  All of the art is on the 3rd floor of the museum and behind walls with vault doors that can shut to completely seal the artwork.  In the original museum structure, when a storm was coming, all of the art work had to be physically removed from the museum and stored in a safe location.

With the larger museum, there are so many more Dali's to see!  Of course you can still view the large paintings, but I was surprised to see many very small works.  His early style was impressionistic, then he moved to realism.  Some of those works are amazingly detailed and you'd never think of Dali. He moved into his 'non art' phase, following Joan Miro (who's large art greeted me each morning in the World Trade Center building 2 lobby).  Eventually, Dali explored mathematics and that's when he became 'Dali'. It was fun to see his latest commercial works, like an ad for Datsun (now Nissan). Remember, he died in 1989. 

the car wasnt full of water this time

We gave Dali most of our afternoon, but there was more to see and do.  So we wandered around downtown St. Petersburg, checking out the restaurants and shops.  It seems the Chamber of Commerce has influence in this town.  We were greeted with 'hello' and 'how are you' at every turn.  From a local guy passing us on the crosswalk to a guy waiting for the bus. The town was happy to see me and the Turk!  We had a private patio for our Thai dinner at Sab Cafe and a wonderful dinner during the evening rain, which ended as we finished.

A scary St Pete resident sharing bench with the Turk

After Breakfast on Sunday, where we were enveloped by a crowd of spandexed bicylists, we sauntered over to the Vinoy to sit a spell on the front porch.  After all, Mark IS the President!