April 2, Day 29, Saturday Tampa to Port Richey

We head to Dali Museum in St. Petersburg. For a Saturday the roads are filled with vehicles.

We approach the area, next to the bay and the remnants of the Indy Racing league race of last weekend.

The concrete barriers and fencing are along the streets and skid marks evident around the corners. Someday I’ll make one of these races.



Dali Museum Entrance



This museum has just opened January 1; two years ago we visited the old museum, this is an impressive building.

One of his works, the Rolls Royce with the deep sea diver driving the lady in the back seat with seashells and seaweed sprinkled on the car, sits in the middle of the entry area.

The gallery is on the third floor, you can take an elevator or the spiral staircase to it. The reason will unveil itself later.

We hookup with a male docent, he sure enjoys his second calling. He points out the many hidden meanings about his brother that died at birth, given the name of Salvador Dali, which was given to the one we know now. His companion Gala shows up in many of his pictures. Another person who shows up frequently is his father. I will not try to explain why there are better google sites to tell you that. It is amazing to me how he can detail paint on a 6 inch square painting and also show the many details of all quadrants of his massive paintings, looking like 14 foot tall and 10 foot wide. Colors, shape – circles, curves, straight line, pictures within pictures, what a mind. We did buy the book that explains the meaning behind them if anyone wants to learn more orhttp://thedali.org/collection/collection_highlights.html. The docent loved to explain the sexual comments Dali made in his painting, of course he was a psychoanalyst.

Every 30 minutes a new docent takes a group, we see that she, ah, somewhat different. Not sure if she knew the shoe should be on the foot?

She gave a somewhat but some same explanation of the paintings. Later she told me that if she is not asked to have her picture taken 10 during the day that it is a failed day. She had been doing this for 14 years and has had no special training but a lot of reading and conversation with other docents.



Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man

Here is my favorite -

As we are looking at one of the large pictures she points to the double helix in one of the pictures and two of them in another. The GALACIDALACIDEOXYRIBONUCLEICACID (Homage to Crick and Watson), was inspiring. And why is the staircase to the third floor spiral?

We thought to eat at the Café Gala, we split a Serranitas – roast pork, Serrano ham, olive oil, tomato manchego, pimento aioli on Focaccia, I a bowl of tasty, reminded me of Mom’s, Caldo Gallego (her bean soup) – Spanish ham with white bean, yummy.

We go outside to walk the maze (to right) but when viewed from the third floor you can see why we couldn’t, the storm of two days ago blew down three palm trees in the area.

We stopped at the Florida Botanical Garden in the Tampa north. It was a nice place to walk. Not sure we were not here once before but will check this picture out against our last trip.



Lily Pad design



None the less a nice walk and a spot we sat in the sun watching the gentle breeze blowing the lily pads in the water.

Now travel north ton Belleair Shores to Clearwater and a lot of people on these fine white sand beaches. We stop at a Marriot for dinner; we first were going to have an appetizer but decided for dinner looking into the bay between the island and the mainland. A basket of assorted warm breads came out with a pad of butter but I opted for the olive oil, look at the container, inside is the balsamic vinegar in a grape shaped vessel surrounded by a tasty virgin olive oil, pour what you want.

Shirleen had a Hess cabernet with her Petit Filet with a blend of mushrooms and black olives on it with a spinach salad;


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My Cesar salad with slices of parmesan cheese on it,

 I the pan fried grouper, look at plate shape.

we split some hash browns. They were fried crisp on the outside succulent on the inside with shallots, small amount of white cheese and bathed in Olive Oil. Back on the road for the night in Port Richey. jerr