Trying new things on staycation

My SIL and my niece spent a week and a half with us after we returned from California. I decided that I would try to take them to places they hadn't visited before, and while I wasn't able to make that a daily thing, we did succeed in trying new places. One of those was the Chihuly Glass Collection in downtown St. Petersburg. The Morean Arts Center, where the exhibit is permanently housed, was celebrating its anniversary and was opening its doors for only $5.00 a ticket. I suggested we all go, and while we thought it would be larger and take longer than thirty minutes to wander through, we all agreed it was different and beautiful.

My husband and my eldest had been there before, but I hadn't. Dale Chihuly led an interesting life and was certainly very creative when it came to working with glass. Since I grew up visiting and watching my mother's friends who were glass blowers, it was very interesting. I would have loved to have seen a video of him creating one of the works, but alas, it was mostly just walking through and looking at his glass..

As art it was beautiful. It was all worth a small fortune, and certainly not for every day folks to display in their homes. Certainly not in my home that is currently crammed full of stuff not considered art, despite inheriting my mother's glass.

There were signs all over telling everyone not to touch the glass. That was hard. I wanted desperately to touch it. The colors were so bright and the glass so shiny, it was hard not to disobey. The cameras directed at us all through the center kept me in check, and I kept my hands in my pockets as much as possible when I wasn't taking pictures.

We left the glass collection and walked downtown which has gone through a huge renovation in the last few years. We ate at a tapas restaurant that Darcy recommended, having eaten their with her friend a couple of times. We all ordered different dishes and shared, and then climbed back into the car and hit the "mural tour", another Darcy recommendation.

Part of the renovation of downtown involved artists painting older buildings to brighten things up. Darcy led us to various buildings with murals so that my niece could take photographs. Tom did the driving from building to building, and we all made lots of comments to how he had been pulled over earlier on our adventure for switching lanes directly in front of a police officer.

It was a fun day, and we all agreed trying new things was a good way to spend a hot summer Saturday.