Florida is nice - it's a good place to visit, it's beautiful, and I love the weather - even when it's super humid out. The rain storms however, are not very conducive to painting... or driving.
(that's a storm about 3 minutes away...)
The trip to Orlando was good, uneventful, and generally beautiful. When I arrived, it wasn't raining and I took a trip over to the airbnb I rented. It was in a nice thoroughly settled part of Florida, about 15 minutes away from Epcot. I had dinner at a decent restaurant across from the laundromat I used to do a load of laundry, and the absolute high point of the experience, beyond talking briefly with my sister, was this astonishingly sweet dog, who was lazing about behind a door,
"I'm sweet you should pet me"
-dog
I slept in a while, and after getting up and out, I went over to the Kennedy Space Center. The drive over there was a long, slow trip along a land bridge. When I got there, I parked and wished my grandmother a happy mother's day. The spaceships were pretty cool, and honestly while I did not learn much of anything new, seeing the astronaut Brian Duffy give a live talk was very cool. He spoke about traveling up to the international space station to do some finishing assembly work on it, and his other trips to space for maintenance missions. Besides seeing Brian talk, it was very cool to see the replica rockets and the scale of both complexity, and staggering size that they have managed to put into space.
After going to the Kennedy space center, I took a trip over to Universal Studios, to visit Diagon Alley. The trip there was good, and incurred the usual rain storms I've been seeing over the last couple days traveling through Florida. I got over to Universal around 5:30, and while I could have gone in, it would have only been about an hour and a half spent in Harry Potter world, without much time to checkout much of anything else. I opted to buy a ticket, and go another day.
After that, I travelled down to Miami, and Coral Gables, where I got a room at the Hampton Inn, to wake up early the next day and head over to the Venetian Pools. .. Or, I would have, if it was open. I took some pictures, and cursed a few times silently, while admiring the beauty and natural waters I was missing out on for lack of looking ahead at the schedule.
After getting over the closed pool, I decided to head back up north by way of Saint Petersburg. Again the drive was relatively uneventful, other than the expected few thunderstorms. Or it would have been, had I (in a long list of things I didn't look at ahead of time), look at the gas gauge. Before I knew it, the light was on, and I needed to pull off the highway to get gas. Using my phone I found a station decently close - just 8 miles away, and made my way over, through a panther reservation. I didn't see any panthers, but I did see an odd looking bird that almost looked like a dodo, and a bunch of turkey vultures in their "heraldic" pose - sunning themselves. I got gas and got back on the road. Fun fact, they pee down their legs to keep cool. Birds, huh?
In Saint Petersburg, I went over to the Salvador Dali museum. Upon walking up the front steps, you're greeted by a blue dolphin to your left, a tree with a bush labyrinth to your right, and a giant mustache front and center of the building's main entrance.
Entering, there is a cafe, and an open concept gift shop, that is full of charming Salvador Dali themed items along with some from Marcel Duchamp. I explored the current exhibitions and took several photos until I was told not to. Honestly, it is an odd decision, as for the flash - it is understandable, however they give you iPods with capable cameras, and much of the fun of Dali's art is interpretive composition.
The permanent gallery is also incredible, full of his works from over the years.
Overall, it was an experience that is difficult to describe without using terms such as spellbinding, and charming. I will say, that the overall amusement in terms of perception and composition Dali delighted in is something I hold close to my heart. Similarly, his work displays a certain boundless respect for religion, coinciding with a similarly large amount of irreverence.