Saturday April 21: St. Petersburg - Plan B - Again!

It happened again. Plan B moved to the forefront when we decided we really wanted to go out for breakfast at the Cortez Cafe. Not that we really had time if we indeed wanted to make it to Caladesi Island (north end of the green line) and arrive at a decent time.

Instead we decided to take a right hand turn at Tampa Bay, follow the orange line and go to St. Petersburg. We've been here several times and really enjoy the area. If storms due in Sunday really show up then this is definitely a better place to be.

So we may skip Caladesi - we need to be at the storage facility on Saturday the 28th for a pull out at 2 pm. Stay here a few more days and head back. It's 2 days back on the blue line to the storage place. We hope to have a night at Cayo Casta again. We'll see.





It's a short bike ride to the cafe and after looking at the specials board, it was a no brainer for Steve: definitely the Greek omlet! He said it was quite tasty ....

We took the long way back through one of the housing developments there - beautiful homes of relatively modest size. In the past we have seen a variety of water birds in the ponds there but nothing unusual out this morning.

Back to the boat and off by 10. It'll be a much shorter day and we expected to arrive around 1 pm. It was very fortunate for us that a boater had canceled this morning - otherwise the downtown marina would have not had a space for us.

The boating gods were with us ....

The Tampa Bay Bridge is a beautiful bridge - probably more so when driving over it but still fun to see from the water. Steve of course was trailing his fish lines. He caught a small spanish mackerel (threw it back) and had two others on the line. One was a good two feet but we couldn't get either one into the boat. Maybe we should use the gaff instead of trying to net the larger ones. We'll think on that!

St. Petersburg is a surprising large city. It probably is dwarfed by Tampa (which can't really even be seen the from here but I don't really know. But it looks nice from the water.


One of the things we really like about the city is how bike friendly it is. We're not just talking about a three foot afterthought along the streets - we're talking about a whole roadway just for the bikes! With a curb in between the bike lanes and the cars. We felt very safe riding around.

So anyway, we settled into our slip and hung around the boat on Thursday to plan our day for Friday.

First was a third visit to the Dali Museum - it's that good! Opens at 10 so we went early so as to attempt to 'beat the crowds'. It worked :-)

They have an excellent audio tour (I love those :-) ) so off we went.


First off was the fun staircase (the stairs end at the floor you can see - the rest is a continuation of the spiral).



The atrium on this floor is a wrap around glass structure that surrounds a good part of the building that faces the waterfront. It's an amazing thing! For lots of info on the museum, exhibits etc, please click here.

The newest exhibit is the 3d reality experience! It was crazy fun! Using one of Dali's paintings ( the Archeological Reminiscence of Millet's Angelus) and the equipment which included the 3d googles and headphones, you could actually step into the painting, look around and move from one part of the painting to another!

For some reason over the past years, I have developed an aversion to high places. As I moved higher and higher up one of the statues, the wind picked up and I truly felt that I was standing many feet above the ground!

View from the top of the sculpture on the left in pic above.

This is what I was viewing! Note the top of a pillar on the right side of the screen. The perception of being high on a ledge was counteracted only by my feet being on the floor and my hands clenching the sides of the chair!

It was really amazing.

Steve wanted to repeat the experience as the time limit is only 3 minutes and he had not found the pathway to the top of the sculptures.

Awesome fun!!

A lunch patio is on the outside of the museum as well as the dolphin painted with parts of several of Dali's most famous painting.

If you ever have a chance, it's a must see in this wonderful city!


It was off to our favorite Thai place for lunch (which was good as usual) and then back to the boat to regroup and refresh.

The weather has been perfect with high's in the low 80's and then cooling off to the 60's at night.

And again no bugs! It's nice to be able to again be able to sit on the flybridge and enjoy the evening.

Today it was off to the annual art festival in the very large park which lines the waterway just north of the marina.

Vendors from all over Florida and many from out of state (including one from Israel).









I walked down a couple of rows and then Steve covered all of the booths in the park.

Some amazing artists presenting their efforts.

This horse is made of wire.

Stone sculptures.

As he was riding along the bike path further north of the park, Steve encountered a full size rino - complete with bonnet and scarf :-)

There is no accounting for taste sometimes!! But very fun for sure ....