Author: bbpeck

A quick update on some of our activities in Austin. Last Tuesday, Bob walked from the apartment to downtown Austin for a late night meet-up with our nephew who was in town for work. Unfortunately, Bob didn’t get any photos of their visit at a downtown restaurant/bar, but he snapped a photo on his walk.

The next evening Bob and I walked a few blocks to a pizza restaurant. We ate off the happy hour menu and scored a coupon for another free pizza there as they screwed up our order. Afterwards, we walked down 37th Street (between where we are staying and the restaurant), where the block of houses was getting prepped for their annual walk-through Christmas decorations.

On Thursday, we walked around the Hyde Park neighborhood (where the apartment is located) to check out a few local sites and shop for some food to bring to our friends’ house that night.

On Friday, Bob and I walked to the UT campus to watch the Longhorn Volleyball Team compete in the NCAA tournament. Our current homeowner only has the Prime streaming service with no local tv and the tickets were sold out, so we went to the Student Activity Center next door to the gym to watch the game.

Tonight, my graduate school Alma mater (Texas) plays my home state (Wisconsin) tonight to advance to the Final Four. Texas has won the national championship two of the last three years, but Wisconsin is playing strong and Nebraska is the top ranked team this year. Bob and I will likely be tuning in and out online as we get a bit too stressed when it gets to this level.

Bob and I finished our first Austin housesit yesterday and went almost right to our second one. We did have a couple of hours in between. Surprisingly, we are doing our current housesit at the same apartment complex (not the same building or unit) that I lived in my last year in graduate school. Bob also lived here for a short time after graduation and before we found another apartment to move to. Small world and a bit of a full circle moment.

Happily, while the complex looks much the same, the area around it has vastly improved, so lots of places to walk to for grocery, restaurants, and shopping.

We had a nice visit and short walkthrough with our young homeowner yesterday before she left on a trip to LA and then Thailand, where hopefully she won’t get caught up in the Thailand/Cambodia hostilities.

We will be caring for Darcy the dog, specifically an 18 year old Dachshund, and Taco the tortoise. Darcy has Cushing’s Disease and wears a diaper overnight. That’s a first for us. Otherwise, she’s a very happy, spry old lady who makes some interesting grunting noises to get your attention.

Today, we walked across the street to the Triangle Development (retail/restaurants/grocery/muti-unit housing) to check out a pond that the homeowner told us about and pick up some groceries for a roasted tomato and pepper gnocchi recipe that Bob is making tonight.

Bob and I had a brief farewell meeting with our St. Petersburg homeowner to catch up on his travels and talk about our love of St. Pete, his condo, and the sweet Lulu. It was definitely a memorable sit. The great weather didn’t hurt and the lack of hurricanes at the end of the hurricane season was a blessing as well.

We left for a “short” four hour drive to start heading towards Austin, Texas, and our next four housesits. We realized too late that we were getting into post Thanksgiving traffic, so the four hour drive took a bit over 5.5. The GPS arrival estimate seemed to get later every time we looked at it. However, other than a slow pace, the weather was good, and we didn’t have any other travel issues. We did, however, arrive to find our hotel’s elevator was broken, so we had a few trips up a couple flights of stairs with what at the time seemed like a lot of stuff (3 suitcases, food bag, and a dirty clothes bag). We travel with more when we go by car as we have all of our worldly possessions with us (mostly some clothes for different seasons that we pick and choose from when we fly).

Monday we left Florida and the Eastern Time Zone to drive through Alabama, Mississippi, and part of Louisiana. We hit a small amount of rain, but the drive was easy in terms of traffic flow. We spent the night in Baton Rouge.

The route wasn’t that scenic, but I need to take photos every once in a while to help pass the time. As you’ll see, I focus on bridges and bodies of water and state lines.

Tuesday, we had a 6.5 hour drive to Austin, Texas, at least 3 of which was in Texas and much of that seemed to be spent getting through Houston.

We’re grateful for no car troubles along the way and the ability to catch up with friends. We’re sitting for a friend now, who left early this morning to fly to Central Florida (small world) for a family wedding. We were able to catch up with her yesterday and meet Sammy or Cowboy Sammy soon to be just Cowboy.

There likely won’t be a lot of blogs while we’re in Austin as we focus on catching up with friends rather than sight seeing.

Today was our day to learn about all things Salvador Dali, at least as presented in the Dali Museum in St. Pete. This is in fact our second trip to the museum having been to the museum in another, smaller location at least 25+ years ago. The current building, which was designed by architect Yann Weymouth, opened in January of 2011. We watched a show about the building a few weeks ago. It is designed to be hurricane resistant and combines the rational with the fantastical, including a geodesic glass bubble known as The Enigma and a helical staircase).

A few photos of the building before discussing the artist, the artwork, and museum experience.

The tickets for the museum were $32 each. It would have been $15 more per person for one of the dome shows, but Bob and I had already done the immersive Van Gogh experience a few years ago in Austin, so we chose not to do that today. We really enjoyed the museum. In addition to looking at the art exhibits, they offer free films about Dali, surrealism, and the museum, free guided public tours of the art, special exhibitions, a virtual reality experience to go into a painting, a cafe, and a great museum shop. While we didn’t eat at the cafe, we took advantage of everything else (though just window shopped in the store). Highly recommend a visit.

If people know anything about Dali, they associate him with surrealism and melting clocks. Both correct, but as we learned, he was really only actively involved with the Surrealists for about 10 years. His art then moved into nuclear mystical.

His technical skill was evident from an early age, and he was able to go to a prestigious art academy in Madrid, though never graduated. At some point, he felt he was good enough and didn’t need to prove himself to instructors or anyone else.

The vast majority of the museum’s collection comes from Reynolds and Eleanor Morse, who collected Dali’s art throughout their marriage and formed a friendship with Dali. They later wrote numerous books and articles on Dali, trained the docents of the Dali Museum (the first building) when it opened in 1982, and in 1989 received the Cross of the Officer of the Order of Isabella the Catholic from King Juan Carlos of Spain in recognition of their scholarly work.

The name of the painting reminded Bob and I of a big head(less) head sculpture we had seen in Iceland in 2022.

Which painting do you see? Play with the size of the photo and see if you can see the other one. Right now, I see Gala, but on my phone it looks like Abe Lincoln.

Bob and I headed to St. Pete Beach this morning once the thick fog cleared. I wish I had thought to take a photo of it from the condo because it seemed thicker higher up.

St. Pete Beach is about 7 miles from downtown St. Pete and lies on the Gulf of Mexico. It is a barrier island community of about 9,000 known for its white sand beaches and claims to be the Sunset Capital of Florida. It is also home to the Don Cesar Hotel, which is why we were there, as it was recommended as a place to check out by our homeowner.

St. Pete Beach is not known for having lots of parking and non-guests at the Don Cesar pay $38 for valet (only option) parking at the hotel, so Bob found us a bus route that goes to St. Pete Beach for a nominal fee of $4.50 round trip. The ride took about 25 minutes, and we both got to enjoy seeing new views of the area. The bus system is called the SunRunner, and the route was Sun to the Beach. The buses are hybrid electric, and this route runs every 15 minutes.

The route ends at a Beach Access point, complete with boardwalks to the beach, a shower for rinsing off, and public restrooms.

After coming back out on the boardwalk, we walked about 1 mile along the busy Gulf Boulevard to the Don Cesar Hotel.

Bob and I were back along the bayfront today. It has become our happy place, and there was more to explore. It’s Saturday, so the market was hopping across the street in the parking lot of Al Lang Stadium, home of the Tampa Bay Rowdies Soccer Team.

We walked past the market to get to the bayfront and then turned south to walk to Albert Whitted Park, which lies between the municipal airport terminal and the air control tower.

Bob and I always enjoy walking around college campuses and we had noticed that there was a college campuses near us, so we had to go check it out. It is the University of South Florida St. Petersburg. That name made no sense to us as St. Petersburg is not located in South Florida, so we thought it must be a satellite campus for a university in Miami or Fort Lauderdale. It is a satellite campus, but the main campus is just across the bay in Tampa, so don’t know, but guess it’s south enough.

Just a note, Bob reminded me the other day, as he reviewed the blog, that we have been referring to Tampa Bay the body of water, but most people think of Tampa Bay the city which is just across the (Tampa) Bay from St. Petersburg.

St. Pete offers a free trolley called The Looper which goes around the downtown area with stops at many of the popular attractions— Dali Museum/Mahaffey Theater, Al Lang Stadium, the Arts District, Central Avenue retail/restaurant area, and the hospitals. We decided to ride the loop today just to see if we’d see any new sites.

There is a Bay Trail that runs along the downtown area along Tampa Bay north to the perky sounding Coffeepot Bayou which borders the very nice Old Northeast Neighborhood. The walk was a bit different than we were expecting as part of the trail was blocked while they are setting up for this weekend’s Countryfest.

The downtown area is getting dressed for the holidays. We need to get out and walk around at night in a couple of days when they have all the decorations set up. It’s definitely a Florida version of the holidays.

Back to the Bay Trail…

One of the lovely sites along the trail is the historic Vinoy Hotel, the land for which was purchased by Ahmed Vinoy Laughner in 1923. It opened on New Year’s Eve 1925. It was used as a training center during WWII and then closed in 1974. It reopened in 1992 as a luxury resort after a $93 million restoration. It has associated condominium properties and its own marina. We walked in to look around. Not too shabby…

We now had Tampa Bay on our right and St. Pete’s Old Northeast Neighborhood on our left. This neighborhood was established in 1911 and was the city’s first residential subdivision. It is known for its beautiful architecture, tree-lined streets, and proximity to downtown.

Some examples of the homes…

Ever since Bob and I saw Dale Chihuly’s incredible glass work on the ceiling of the lobby at the Bellaggio Hotel and Casino inLasVegas, we have been interested in his work and in glass blowing in general. We were excited to discover the “Blown Away” competition show on Netflix and have watched all of those episodes. We knew when we saw that St. Pete had a Chihuly collection that we would have to see it.

The ticket to the collection ($22) gets you entry to their collection of Chihuly’s work as well as a glass blowing demonstration in the Morean Art Center glass studio. We went today and began our visit at the glass studio.

Dan Alexander made two pieces of glasswork while another artist discussed what he was doing. It’s crazy what fire, sand, human breath, and manipulation of hot glass can create.

The first photos show Dan working on a glass swan.

The swan took about 5 minutes to make. He then created a platter.

Back at the Chihuly Collection, we learned that Dale Chihuly studied glassblowing at the University of Wisconsin (Go Badgers!) after getting his degree in interior design and architecture from the University of Washington. He also worked at the Venini glass factory on the island of Murano, Italy.

At the end of the collection, they showed a number of short films about his work, much of which resides in conservatories or other natural environments.

After most of the morning inside the condo on Monday waiting for the cleaning crew to arrive, Bob and I took Lulu out for a walk to a local cafe for a bagel. The cleaning crew comes every other week, so this is the one time we will have them, and since they have a number of workers, we only needed to kill an hour out of the condo while they worked. That was easily done by the walk to and from the bagel shop as well as dining time, as Lulu found lots of smells of interest along the route.

That afternoon, we just walked around Demens Landing, which is a small piece of land that juts into Tampa Bay between the St. Petersburg Pier and a small municipal airport.

A couple of views back towards the city

Bob and I had a great night out at the Mahaffrey Theater on Friday night to see Phil Rosenthal. The show started at 7:00, and the doors opened at 6:00, so we went a bit early to peruse the theater with a glass of wine. Sadly, no photography was allowed anywhere inside the theater, so I have few photos of the night.

The show was great with a short montage of clips from “Somebody Feed Phil” and then an hour of him responding to questions about his history in Hollywood from a local chef and then Q and A with the audience. The Q and A was the worst part, as you always have people who just need to get their 15 minutes of fame by telling unnecessary stories or expressing opinions before finally getting to a question that’s another version of one somebody else already asked. Never mind that there’s 30 other people waiting to ask a question.

Every Saturday from October through May, there is a Saturday Market in the parking lot of the St. Pete Rowdies’ Soccer Stadium right across from the condo. It was hopping when we went. We bought some produce for a veggie omelet, some fruit, and a small “personal” chocolate bourbon pecan pie. Whoever came up with the idea to give out samples knew what they were doing!

Today, we decided to walk a bit of the Pinellas Trail. The Pinellas Trail is a 75 mile multi-use trail following an abandoned railroad corridor. It runs from Tarpon Springs in the north to the waterfront of St. Petersburg and runs through other cities like Clearwater and Dunedin. The end of the trail is literally right outside of the condo, with the last few blocks being on city sidewalks along First Avenue South.

Since we started at the St. Pete end, we walked the first few blocks on city sidewalks before getting on the asphalt trail near the baseball stadium. We saw a lot of residential buildings downtown before walking through a bit of the Arts District and more industrial areas. There were murals and other art along the trail. We only walked an hour out before turning around, so there is a lot more of the trail to explore.

Bob and I continue to be impressed with the walkability of the area we are in — easy access to grocery, restaurants, retail, museums, theaters, and sports stadiums, not to mention the bay and water activities.