Our excursion today took us to the Dali Museum for a docent-led tour though a small part of their collection. I’d always thought of Dali as that surrealistic painter with a mustache, but our docent Judith showed us that he was far more. We saw some of his very early works – photorealistic and cubist, among other styles.

We spent a good part of the tour looking at his surrealistic paintings (he was only a true Surrealist from 1929 to 1939, when he and the group parted ways), like The Average Bureaucrat and Eggs on the Plate Without the Plate. Judith took us on a guided tour of each of the paintings, using a flashlight to point out significant items like Dali and his father, the people from The Angelus by Millet, and more.

The Dali has a number of interactive exhibits, including one inspired by Aphrodisiac Telephone (also called Lobster Telephone), where you could ask an LLM trained on Dali’s writings to answer questions – I didn’t get a chance to try it, unfortunately.

Judith also took us through some of Dali’s later (and larger) post-WWII works which were influenced by his interest in science.

My favorite work was Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea which at Twenty Meters Becomes the Portrait of Abraham Lincoln – Homage to Rothko (Second Version), which is exactly described by the title.

Here’s what it looks like from twenty meters away.

I could have spent hours exploring the museum, but Diane’s cousin, Barb, had driven to St. Petersburg to see us. We all had lunch at The Hangar at Albert Whitted Airport (a general aviation airport between the Dali and our ship) and then took the Looper to the St. Pete Pier for walking, conversation, and a little more art.

St. Petersburg is an interesting place, well worth a return visit!

We were on the tender at 8:30 for our excursion to the Peace River Botanical and Sculpture Gardens, which, like so much else in the area, had been hit hard by Hurricanes Helene and Milton during the fall. Despite the hurricanes and their accompanying storm surge, it was a beautiful place – most of their sculptures survived, many of the plants are recovering and they are doing new planting, and there are butterflies in the butterfly garden again.

Our docent, Jeanette, took us on a walk around the grounds. Here are some highlights.

Between our excursions, we had a tasty lunch at Village Brewhouse in Fishermen’s Village instead of taking the tender to and from the ship. Staying ashore also let us do a little shopping and see rescued owls from Peace River Wildlife Rescue.

We also got to see them removing one of the boats sunk by Hurricane Milton from the water; I guess they’ll haul it away sometime soon.

Our second excursion was a guided walk to see a few of Punta Gorda’s murals; there are more than 30. The first one we saw is doomed to destruction fairly soon because the former bank building it’s on was damaged beyond repair by…you guessed it…hurricanes.

The other murals we saw were on buildings in better shape, so they should be here for a while.

While we were at the “Ladies Remembered” mural, one of the honorees made a personal (if ghostly) appearance to tell us the real story of her life…meet Helen Cornish Wrobbel, a fire fighter and firebrand.

We also saw the real “Fountain of Youth” (it taps an artesian well), but it has a small problem…the water is radioactive!

We sailed away from Punta Gorda before dinner; it seems like it’s going to be a bumpy ride tonight.