The Pier

The day we went north to St. Petersburg to see the Chihuly glass, we saw a structure at the end of the pier in the harbor, called appropriately, "The Pier", overlooking Tampa Bay. So we decided to check it out. There were supposed to be some cool shops in there, five levels of 'em, an aquarium, and three restaurants. It also had an observation deck and some catwalks for fishing. As it was a cold day, we thought maybe there would be something interesting inside to look at. Just as any attraction is one thing to someone, it's something else to another, it's all a matter of opinion. We walked down to it and checked it out inside. It seemed to be an older shopping complex and kind of dated. There is an aquarium on the second floor, and it was quite small, so we didn't pay admission to go inside. The shops on the first and other floors were your usual tourist type shops--clothes, candles, crystal stuff and knickknacks. It's a small space for each shop, so when the main aisle gets crowded, there's not a lot of room to move either in or out of the shops. There are benches for seating so guys can sit down and take it easy while their gals shop. We ate a snack at the Cha Cha Coconuts Tropical Bar and Grill (love that name!). It was a family place and it was busy today. Food was good, great snacks! If you want a better place to shop, there are many beautiful stores out away from the pier on the main avenue around the museums and the harbor. They looked expensive, however! We are not shoppers, so we tend not to even go into stores unless it's an outlet mall and we are looking for something specific. Now, knitting and craft stores, that's another story as Eldy will tell you. It's hard to keep me out of them.

We got a kick out of this fortune telling booth, but didn't try it out. There is some movie jogging my memory that has this same Zoltar, the fortune telling guy in it, but I can't for the life of me remember which movie it is. If this looks familiar to anyone, please let me know....Remember the old photo booths that you would jam into with one or more of your friends and get your photo taken for a buck? (or less in the old days). They had one of those, too! Costs $5.00 now to do that...I almost dragged Eldy into the booth, but we were ready to go home. The next time I see one, we're gonna do it!

Tomorrow we are going to Solomon's Castle, an interesting anomaly in Ona, Florida. It's a castle in the middle of nowhere, built by a sculptor with a stand up comedy sense of humor. Thanks to Nick's Blog, and Roadside America for pointing us in that direction. We'll see you at the castle!

St. Petersburg Sights

Persian style,  on the ceiling

Off to see the wizard...uh, nope! Not unless I get some tickets to go see The Wiz, a Broadway show, but I digress......Off to see St. Petersburg, Fl! It's cold again today...the high was 48...time to find something interesting indoors.  I checked out the Chihuly glass exhibit at the downtown gallery on the waterfront on Beach Drive in St. Petersburg. This is a permanent exhibit. I'm not much into art museums, but for some reason, this glass art amazes me, and I just love to see it. Dale Chihuly is a modern, (still living) glass artist and his creations are beautiful. He is a talented glass blower himself, but he needs a team of glass blowers to help him complete his designs that are on such a grand scale. He is the master designer of all things glass...He lives in Seattle, WA and has displays all over the world. I guess the hotel Bellagio in Las Vegas has Chihuly glass among many many other locations. Again, you can't take photos or even have your cell phone out to check the time at a gallery like this..a lady was chastised for taking an emergency phone call from her daughter while in the gallery. I guess they thought she was going to whip out her cell phone to take photos of the glass. So today's photos are from the web. 

They really were this beautiful!

Chihuly has different "series" of glass creations--baskets--self explanatory,  persians-- which are often mounted on walls and ceilings, seaforms --which are more delicate thin walled soft colors of glass basket styles, chandeliers, nijama floats--which are incredible large glass balls, and more. One of my favorites is the fiore which is a spectacular garden of glass with all kind of tubular and bulbous shapes in the most incredible color blends. One of the distinctions of his glass work is the way he has contrasting "lip wraps" on the edges of the glasswork, like the black on the pink seafoam example above. And the way they light the glass, WOW! The exhibit lights truly add to your visual experience. These photos are from the web....this bottom one is one of the displays I saw at the St. Petersburg exhibit hall today.

One of the interesting things I learned was that he has a team of about 30 glass blowers at any given time and overall, he employs about 100 people. These glass sculptures are truly a team effort. Some of his tubular structures of glass ( like the example shown above) are so long or tall, that he is not able to manufacture them in his home state studio in Washington. He was going to build his own annealing kilns to make these, but the kilns require so much electrical energy, the power company told him he would have to build his own substation! I don't think so! So he takes his team to Finland every couple of years (sounds like a whole lot more fun to me) to complete these tremendous projects. Apparently, Finland is more willing to help Chihuly (an American) realize his artistic dreams than our own government. Price of admission? for a senior (over 55) $13.00 A chance to see a modern artist's works to challenge your senses? Priceless! Another cool thing about viewing this exhibit is, you can purchase an additonal ticket for not much more for the "Hot Shop"/ Glass Studio at the Morean Arts Center a few blocks away from the main exhibit...there you can go observe artists creating glass sculptures and hear the commentary on how they do it. You can actually have the experience of blowing glass as well. I did not do that tour today, just the Chihuly glass show. This was a spectacular experience and well worth the expense, in my opinion! Off I go tomorrow on another adventure with my Eldo....