Day 8 - 23rd October

Today we awoke in St Petersburg, and were off to see the Chihuly exhibition as part of the twin Dali / Chihuly stop. Dale Chihuly is an American artist specialising in intricate glass blown structures and shapes, the intricacy of which is stunning. He was involved in a car accident in 1976 where he lost an eye, and in 1979 dislocated a shoulder in a body surfing accident which meant he could no longer hold the equipment necessary to create his sculptures. However he now directs and trains others in his style so his work can continue.

However, first stop was breakfast, and we’d scoped out a café, Kahwa, on 2^nd Ave Sth so decided to walk there. 

A brief word on street naming and numbering. It’s extremely logical (despite which both Deb and I lost our sense of direction a few times, it’s being in the wrong hemisphere that does it!), and while this may not apply to every city & town, certainly seems to be almost the norm from what we’ve seen so far. There’s a central avenue running through the city, and then avenues running parallel are numbered 1^st Ave Nth, 2^nd Ave Nth and so on, and in the opposite direction, 1^st Ave Sth , 2^nd Ave Sth etc, all radiating away from Central. Running perpendicular to these are streets, with 1^st street starting at one ‘end’ of Central and then all streets numbered in sequential order. Streets to the north of central are labelled accordingly ( 1^st St North) as are those to the south (1^st St South). It ends up being a fairly good grid pattern enabling one to get a good idea of where places are or how far away things are.

So back to breakfast and we wandered off from the hotel to the café. It was another superb day, and the streets were very quiet as we made our way. It was a Sunday so I guess there were not many people going to work in the CBD, and it made for a nice relaxed walk. We came across a huge building that was being demolished. Initially we thought it was a modern building that had been built over an older one, but looking a bit closer we could see that what we thought was a building exterior, was in fact huge pieces of cladding to prevent any debris from falling into the streets (and onto vehicles & pedestrians). A big guy was standing there directing traffic, so we asked him a bit about what was going on, and he said that as they were using old School techniques, like a wrecking ball, the demolition would probably take up to two months to complete, but it was being done very slowly & carefully. However it meant that some of the central streets had been blocked off and I imagine they’ll be blocked off for the duration thus cause a bit of havoc with city traffic (we had to follow a couple of detours on our subsequent travels around the city).

St. Petersburg seems to be a really ‘arty’ city with many galleries and boutiques dotted around the place, and sculptures dotting the streets. There seems to be a pretty vibrant ‘arts & café’ culture and I couldn’t help but equate it a bit to what we saw of either Seattle (though with nicer weather) or Wellington ( with different coffee, see below) and I think the city tries to promote itself as such. Hard to define, but it seems appropriate that the Dali & Chihuly exhibitions are here rather than, say, in Tampa or Miami.

We found our café without too much trouble and had a pretty light breakfast of coffee, croissant & fruit. It was quite a neat little café with tiled tables and a young, hip, staff. The way that coffee’s done in the US is quite a bit different from NZ, and there’s nothing approaching the classic flat white or long black. We tried to equate it, Deb by choosing a cafe latte and me by choosing an Americano (basically black coffee). We’d ordered large coffees and we’d forgotten that large in the US means Jumbo in NZ! So Deb had to get an extra shot of espresso for hers (and it could’ve used another shot), and I had to put a bucket of cream in mine. The coffee struggle shall continue, but I think the US is ready for Flat whites and long blacks.  

After breakfast we headed back to the Hotel to check out, collect our car, then drive to the Chihuly exhibit. Checkout and car collection was achieved without too much drama, however on arriving at the exhibition building, we found that they didn’t open until midday (we thought they opened at 11). In fact most of St Petersburg doesn’t open until midday on a Sunday, so we had some time to kill. We decided to head back to a neat design store near the waterfront which had some great sculptures we had our eye on (we’d been in the night before when we went out for dinner), and these guys opened at 11am! So a quick car trip down to the waterfront to visit the store and pick up our goodies and then back to the exhibition center which, by this time, was open.

The exhibit was stunning, and there were no barriers allowing people to get close and appreciate the detail in the sculptures. They’re displayed in low light with bright spotlights on the sculptures bringing out the detail and colour, except for a fully glass ceiling which is backlit. They’re stunning pieces and the larger pieces must be incredibly heavy (some are suspended on awfully thin wires from the ceiling). There aren’t as many items in the exhibit as we’d been able to see before, they provide a great cross section of his work.

After doing a little shopping in the museum store, we jumped in the car and headed back down Central Avenue to a bookshop, Haslam’s, that I’d seen advertised in a city map. It took several blocks to get to but fortunately was just in a straight line. The bookshop was pretty huge, and probably covered half a block on one level. The selection was great, and so I spent about half an hour or so rummaging around before coming away with a few treats (there was a lot of picking up and putting down). The store even had a cat which I managed to frighten off accidentally.

So with Joe duly satisfied, we jumped back in the car and bade farewell to St Petersburg and headed on our way towards Pensacola. The journey was planned for 6 hours, so we figured we’d get as far as we could then stop for the night.

The GPS (now behaving itself very well) took us slightly west of the main Interstate highway, and we went on US 19 all the way to just outside Tallahassee. The drive itself was pretty uneventful, although we had a rather unsettling moment when we stopped for fuel along the way. The station we stopped at was really busy, with people waiting patiently behind others who were filling up. The chap we were waiting behind, had obviously made some comment to another younger guy who was at the neighbouring set of pumps, probably to the effect he should move forward and let the person waiting fill up. Well this younger guy just exploded in a torrent of abuse and rage ( “you should f**ing just fill your own self up and not f**k with me. I’m still F**king filling up” – you get the drift) while the other guy, probably in his 60’s or so, was just waving his hand to say sorry and wishing he’d never opened his mouth. For one moment we thought this younger guy would walk over and start something, but fortunately he got into his pickup and screeched the tyres as he sped off. Phew!  Alas the post code trick of allzeros didn’t work and Deb had to go in and pre-pay.  This time though they did it for a pre-set amount and would refund the difference if we poured less.

The drive was through a lot of wooded areas and the roads straight and pretty much easy driving. We went through many small towns along the way that provided a slice of Americana we hadn’t seen up until now. The highway ran through the center of these towns, much like NZ, but the towns themselves seemed to be struggling to stay alive (as it were), with many closed shops and derelict malls lining the highways. Most of the businesses were gas stations, hotels and chain stores like fast food, Walgreens and the like. It must be a difficult life out here as it seemed quite off the beaten track and we wondered what the primary industries might be.

As we travelled, there were a lot of motor cycle groups coming in the other direction. We saw several bunches and all were riding big American road bikes like Harley’s. No room for the Japanese motor bikes here! We also saw a few pickups flying the confederate flag, and a few gun stores advertising “Get your guns before Hilary does”. We’ve seen more “Trump/Pence” signs than “Hilary/Kaine” signs, so I guess that sums up the preference of this part of the state.

We arrived just outside of Tallahassee early evening and settled on a Hotel just outside of town (far better room rates out here too) and then after settling in and doing some admin decided to try & get some food. We went back up the road (on US90, under the freeway we arrived on) but were snarled up in a huge traffic jam. Cops and cars everywhere, and there seemed to be a big car show that was emptying out, so the police were trying to direct traffic and pedestrians. After a slow crawl we ended up at the “Publix” supermarket, a chain of supermarkets there that carry a great range of food and we picked a couple of chicken meals and came back to the hotel to finish off the day. Tomorrow we might have a look around Tallahassee then head into Pensacola.