From Sarasota, we spent a night on Turtle Beach on Siesta Key. Mary Lou was warned that if she took one more picture of a heron, the camera was getting thrown in the ocean. Stopped at a local fresh fish market and picked up a pound of Gulf Shrimp for some shrimp cocktail with our salad. We hugged the coast North into St. Petersburg, and when reading the morning newspaper, realized that the $36 million new Salvador Dali Museum had just opened two days before. We had already seen the collection in the original museum a few years earlier, but decided that the timing of the opening was too perfect, and we had to pay it a visit.
Even though it's not cool to like Dali anymore, we still enjoy being impressed with his skill and amazed by his imagination. But we weren't big fans of the building itself. It's a giant cement box with a blue glass tumor bubbling out of the side, and what is supposed to be a boulder from Dali's home town supporting one corner of the box. It kind of looked like every other urban, modern building, designed as an experiment in form, but with the expected surrealist touch. The center spiral staircase trailed off, ribbon like, up to the glass ceiling. Predictable (and incomparable to say, a Gehry, staircase). Both the physical layout and the curation of the gallery inside, were fragmented and choppy. There was no narrative to follow and we found we had to backtrack to see areas that we had bypassed behind floating walls. We did have some of the best coffee that we have had this trip, and some decadent chocolate tiramisu, at the Gala Cafe in the lobby. We also traipsed through the hedge maze of tall bushes that led us to a disappointing climax of finding in the center, a silly tree that looked exactly like another hedge.
We decided to get back on the coast, and find some more Gulf shrimp.
Soundtrack -
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, Kanye West
Four Tet
Avett Brothers
Click here for photos!
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