We drove another 4 hours to Tampa where we stayed the night and in the morning we picked up my daughter, Havanna, at the airport. From there we went to The Coffee Lab for coffee and breakfast. Then, we headed over to Hyde park and picked up some cupcakes from the Sprinkles Cupcake ATM for dessert. It was hot out, so we stopped into a popsicle shop and I got a blueberry/lavender popsicle and Havanna got some other kid of interesting flavor. They were both delicious and definitely helped cool us off!
Our next stop was La Segunda Bakery to pick up a couple of their super delicious Cuban sandwiches (which in my opinion are the best in the world)! We packed them for the road and headed over to the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg (about 30 minutes away).
The Dali museum was beautiful. It had this wonderful spiral staircase in the center and glass ceiling above. We watched a brief movie about the life of Dali on the first floor. I have been a Dali fan all my life and I never knew he was from Spain. Next, we climbed the staircase to the third floor where they had an installation of photographs by Lee Miller. She was a photojournalist during WWII and took many photographs of Dali and Picasso. I was so impressed by her ability to capture natural light in her photographs. In my opinion that it the mark of a truly great photographer. I pray I can be that good one day.
In the adjacent room was the Dali collection. I was surprised to see some of his early works which were more traditional styles (realist, impressionist, cubist, etc.). Eventually he found his own “voice” and began to create his own unique signature optical illusion style. I love the multi-dimensional aspect of his paintings. Like my daughter said, it was so amazing to see his original works up close and observe the brush strokes on the canvas!
After exploring the museum, we jumped back in the truck and drove 2 hours south to my grandparents’ house in Ft. Myers where our family is getting together for my grandma’s memorial service tomorrow.