Wes & Erica go to Tampa, FL, part 3

Well, actually this post will be about sightseeing in St. Petersburg, Florida (sightseeing in Tampa was last week's blog post, here and here) ...and mainly pictures from the Dalí Museum. Earlier this year, I heard an advert on the radio about St. Petersburg & Clearwater. One of the main attractions was the Salvador Dalí museum and I was determined to go. I fell in love with Dalí's art when I studied abroad in Spain many moons ago. My friends and I went to his museum in Figueres and it captivated my imagination. The Dalí Museum did not disappoint. We ended up doing a couple of other things while we were in St. Petersburg.

We decided to go to the museum on a Sunday to experience the "Mimosas and Masterpieces" brunch. Its supposed to be an artisanal brunch using local ingredients that are currently in season. Sadly, it wasn't even half as great as I thought it would be. First of all, the waitress couldn't explain the specials to us, which was crazy because there is no brunch menu... all that we had to choose from was what the chef decided to whip up that morning and she had no idea what it was. 😒 Secondly, the service was extremely slow. And thirdly, our food was just meh. Brunch was: a grilled cheese sandwich that was soaked in olive oil and used a Spanish cheese (Manchego, maybe) that wasn't melted all the way, an average mimosa and the only thing that was super tasty - a artichoke bisque with a walnut pesto swirl.

After brunch we explored the museum. We started outside in the garden, which had a few sculptures, then wandered around the ginormous gift shop. There were two special exhibits at the museum: a virtual reality tour of a few of Dalí's paintings (we put on virtual reality headsets and followed these dots to "go into" Dalí's paintings; it was super cool but we had to take off our glasses so I couldn't see the dots very well and I suck at video games anyway so I would have had a hard time following the dots with or without my glasses. I think Wes had a much better time at it than I did) and the Midnight in Paris exhibit, which was a collection of artwork from Dalí's contemporaries in the Surrealist movement. Wes really enjoyed Midnight in Paris but I instantly learned that I'm not a fan of surrealism... I apparently just like Dalí's art and no one else's. LOL

The main galleries were absolutely memorizing. I felt like I stood and gazed at each work for an hour but we actually went through it all at a remarkably quick pace. We were only in the main galleries for about two hours and I expected the museum to take the entire day. There was a ton of Dalí's work, many smaller paintings and drawings and eight masterworks. The masterworks were huge wall-sized paintings (his famous ones: Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea which at Twenty Meters Becomes the Portrait of Abraham Lincoln and The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus among others). My favorite piece is Sentimental Colloquy.

After the museum, we walked around St. Petersburg, did a little souvenir shopping (and A LOT of window shopping, it was Sunday so a bunch of the cute boutiques were closed) and sat at the marina at Demens Landing Park, which was the closest we could get to the ocean because we were not dressed for the beach. We ended up at the Sundial mall for lunch. There were a few upscale shops at Sundial but I wasn't feeling posh enough to go in them. We had lunch at Locale Market. Wes got a burger and I got tacos. Lunch was much much yummier than brunch was.

Our evening activity was Enchant Christmas at Tropicana Field. When I was researching activities to do, this came up as a "Christmas market" so I was thinking it was a local craft show. Oh no, it is so much more. There was a craft show (which was actually quite disappointing; no unique vendors. I think I've become a craft show snob because I've done so many myself) and food court (think gross concession stand food) but the main attraction was the light maze. I'm not a "get in the Christmas spirit" kind of person, but even I was impressed by the light maze. It was really rad and completely  made up for the lackluster craft show and food. The maze took up the entirety of the stadium and featured HUGE lighted snowflakes, Christmas trees and reindeer. All beautiful,colorful and full of holiday cheer. Wes noted that they used non-traditional Christmas colors so there wasn't an onslaught of red and green, which he appreciated. The premise was that all of Santa's reindeer got loose and we had to walk around the maze to find them. About every five minutes or so "snow" fell inside the maze. It was extremely busy so everyone just bumbled around instead of following a path to the reindeer. But it wasn't really a maze (more like a huge open space with some guidelines as to where to go) so it was okay to wander wherever. We walked around quite a bit and found all nine reindeer.

St. Petersburg makes for a good day trip but I wouldn't suggest planning for more than a day as there aren't very many tourist attractions. Its mostly shopping and dining. We spent two days in Tampa but we probably could have done everything in one day. I used to over plan for our trips and we were more exhausted than relaxed after a vacation. I've dialed it back and I only book one tourist attraction per day. It was nice to have the downtime but I sort of feel like we spent more time in the hotel than we did out and about, which was a tad bit boring. I need to find the medium between "aggressively sightseeing" and "lazy tourist". All in all, I think we had a nice time in Florida. We both really enjoyed the food (I've never had Cuban food until visiting). I'm sure the weather was supposed to be nice but I thought it was way too hot, especially for December! One last thing to note is that the Ubers were exceptionally clean, like I don't think I've ever ridden in vehicles as clean as the ones we got. So that's it for birthday #35, looking forward to 2020!

Wes & Erica go to Tampa, FL, part 2

December was a trying month (but we don't need to talk about that..), regardless, I am determined to travel on my birthday no matter what, and I wanted to celebrate another completed craft show season, so off to Florida we went!! 🌞 I think we did a little less than we usually do when we travel but we both still enjoyed the trip. We only went to three activities -

Coppertail Brewing Night Market-
Coppertail is a local brewery in Ybor, FL. Every second Friday evening, the brewery opens its back parking lot to crafters and artisans for a night market. This was a really fun event with good customer turnout, Oklahoma breweries take note (and allow RagsReborn to be a vendor 😉). There was a good variety of vendors--about 30-40 of them--and they were all handmade. The weather was amazing - 70℉, cool with no wind. The only weird thing was that not many of the vendors were selling Florida themed stuff. I was surprised there wasn't any tshirts, stickers or any of the other usual crafty items with the state outline of Florida printed on them. There was a local rescue there with a litter of eight-week old boxer/German shepherd puppies. They were so cute in their Christmas bandannas! There was only one food truck at the market (they preferred that everyone eat in the taproom but it was PACKED and I was too hungry to wait in line). The food truck was a pizza one. They made our pizzas to order in a little portable brick oven. We ordered a margherita pizza but it didn't have basil. I instantly didn't like it for that reason, that and the crust was burnt. We also got beers (of course, we were at a brewery!). Wes ordered a Day Swim, a coffee & vanilla porter that was pretty good and tasted as expected. I got the Florida Special, which was just your average blonde beer. Nothing special about the beers but the night market was worth going to.

Tampa Art Museum-
The art museum was pretty good but also really small. It was only one floor and we went through it all in about an hour. The gift shop was bigger and had more interesting stuff than the museum did. LOL Wes really liked the Greek & Roman vessels and other statuettes (above). He liked the use of the color black in the artifacts. My favorite thing at the museum was the mummy. Well, it was only a sarcophagus. When the explorers found it, there was no mummy inside. I think if there is a mummy in a museum, it will always be my favorite part of the museum. The drawings on the sarcophagus were really detailed and told an intricate story but I've forgotten it now.

The special exhibit at the museum was a collection of Haitian voodoo flags. They were much more colorful and bejeweled than I thought they'd be (but I know literally nothing about Haitian culture or voodoo so who am I to judge). All of the flags were decorated using either beads or sequins. Many of them depicted St. Jacques who was the leader of the Haitian revolution.

The Florida Aquarium-
The aquarium was amazing and completely worth going to if you ever are in Tampa. The place was gigantic with eight different areas to explore. There was a really good variety of animals and sea life to view. We started in the wetlands section and wandered all the way through to the "Dragons of the Sea" section (my favorite), we skipped the splash pad and 4-D movie theater even though they were included in our ticket. We saw everything from birds to jelly fish to lemurs to lobsters. The wetlands section had all of the birds flying free instead of in cages, which I thought was rad even if we got splashed by a hooded merganser duck several times (like literally each time he swam by us) and almost got shat on by a roseate spoonbill bird. LOL Wes's favorite animal - the snowy egret bird - was in the wetlands, too.

A lot of the exhibits were interactive. I got to "pet" a jelly fish, star fish and a sea anemone. I would have also touched a stingray but he didn't swim close enough to me. An aquarium worker randomly brought out a penguin for us to see (but not touch). The aquarium has a few penguins but they aren't on display, yet. They live in the back for now. My favorite creature (and probably my new favorite animal, sorry okapi) was the leafy seadragon. This thing looks insane and astounding at the same time. It was a medium sized seahorse with branches growing out of it! Just look at it!! Extraordinary!

So that's a wrap for Tampa. If you go, try to go on the second Friday of the month so you can visit the night market. Plan to spend several hours at the aquarium (we probably spent 3-4 hours there). We went on a Monday so it wasn't crowded. You can probably skip the art museum. I didn't mention it but we also took a stroll along the Riverwalk. It was a nice two-mile walk. You start at the art museum and end up at Armatage Works. We spent a day in St. Petersburg as well, more on that next week!