Two Days at the Beach – And Some Great Museums in Saint Petersburg Florida

By Jeff Burns

The beaches of the Tampa Bay/Clearwater/Saint Petersburg area have drawn throngs of tourists for over a century, but there is much more to enjoy than just great beaches. History and Art lovers have some great museums to visit too!

One of the jewels in Saint Pete for a number of years has been the Dali Museum, opened in 1982. From the Museum website:  “The Dali Museum celebrates the life and work of Salvador Dali (1904-1989) and features works from the artist’s entire career. The collection includes over 2,100 works from every moment and in every medium of his artistic activity, including oil paintings, many original drawings, book illustrations, artists’ books, prints, sculpture, photos, manuscripts and an extensive archive of documents. Founded with the works collected by A. Reynolds and Eleanor Morse, the Museum has made significant additions to its collection over the years.” The collection is amazing, and if you are a Dali aficionado, it is a must-see.  The Dali also attracts other world-class exhibits that complement Dali’s works. 

Perhaps the most unexpected discovery on our most recent trip was The Imagine Museum, a museum dedicated to the medium of art glass. Maybe it doesn’t sound exciting at first, but believe me, you will be blown away (pun, get it?) by what you see.  Incredibly beautiful and provocative works can be found in every gallery, and you will see things that seem impossible.
 

The Tampa Bay History Center is located in downtown Tampa on the beautiful Riverwalk and is well worth your time. There, see the history of the area unfold, from the earliest inhabitants to Spanish exploration to the development of the cigar industry, and much more.

For more about things to do in Tampa, check out our older blog on Ybor City (the start of modern Tampa), and consider the Henry Plant Museum.  The Plant is located in an 1891 hotel, not too far from the Riverwalk and Ybor City areas.  It is now a museum owned by the University of Tampa and dedicated to the Gilded Age, the period when the wealthy flocked to Tampa to vacation, thanks to the work of early Florida railroad magnate Henry Plant.  The hotel was also the headquarters of the American forces as they prepared for the Spanish American War.

Day (Or 2 Or 3) Trip: Cody, Wyoming

By Jeff Burns

Cody Wyoming was named for its founder, Buffalo Bill Cody, the scout, hunter, and Wild West Show creator.  Located about an hour from Yellowstone National Park, Cody is full of great attractions.

Whether you stay there or not, you have to visit the Hotel Irma, built by Buffalo Bill Cody and named for his daughter.  The rooms are quaint and old-fashioned, but a little pricey. Have a meal in the restaurant and then walk around the lobby and gift shop.  Every evening during the summer, the street in front of the hotel is closed off for a Wild West shootout show. 

The biggest attraction in Cody is the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, sometimes called the “Smithsonian of the West.” It’s actually five museums in one, and you could spend a couple or three days exploring the Center alone.  The museums are the Draper Museum of Natural History, the Plains Indian Museum, the Cody Firearms Museum, the Whitney Western Art Museum, and the Buffalo Bill Museum dedicated to the life of the showman.

Every third weekend of June, the Center hosts an annual Plains Indian Powwow, which brings tribal dancers and Native American artisans from throughout the West to the performance area next door to the Center. It is a fantastic experience, an auditory and visual spectacle that will stay with you for a long time. Word of Advice:  Book your hotel early if you plan to be in town for the powwow, at least 6 months in advance.  Rooms fill fast.

For a taste of the Old West, visit Old Trail Town, a collection of cabins and buildings from the area that have been set up for visitors.  The cabins include cabins belonging to Curly, one of the Crow Indian scouts with Custer at Little Bighorn, and Jeremiah “Liver-eating” Johnson, the real life mountain man portrayed in the 1972 film Jeremiah Johnson by Robert Redford. You can also explore a cabin and saloon occupied and patronized by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Johnson is one of several notables buried at Old Trail Town, along with Buffalo Bill himself.

About twenty minutes from Cody, you can find the Heart Mountain Relocation Center, one of 10 internment camps built during World War II for thousands of Japanese-Americans forced from their homes on the West Coast following the attack on Pearl Harbor.  Not much remains of the original structures of the camp, but the Interpretive Center is excellent.  This was one of the darkest moments in American history, and the Heart Mountain complex does a great job of telling this painful story.

It is Wyoming, so summertime is rodeo time in Cody.  There’s an amateur rodeo every night from June through August, and a big professional rodeo is in town the first week of July. In town, there are neat shops and restaurants.  Cody offers a lot to keep you occupied.

 

Day Trip: Thermopolis, Wyoming

By Jeff Burns

Thermopolis Wyoming is the county seat of Hot Springs County, with a population around 3,000.  The name Thermopolis is Greek for “Hot City”, in reference to the numerous hot springs which have drawn tourists to the area since the 19^th century.

The Hot Springs State Park is located in Thermopolis, and you can bathe in thermal mineral pools, with a temperature around 104 degrees (F), for free.  There are also two water concessions in the park, Teepee Pools and Star Plunge, where you can pay to enjoy water slides and other pool fun.  Once out of the pool, be sure to drive around the park and see the Wyoming state buffalo herd.

The Hot Springs County Museum is a must-see, with a great collection of artifacts from the 19^th and early 20^th century.  One great exhibit consists of a simulated raised wooden sidewalk that takes you down a street of the Old West, allowing you to see inside the storefronts.  Across the street, there are several buildings housing special collections, including an old schoolhouse and a caboose.

Interested in ancient history? Technically, pre-history?  East Thermopolis is home to the Wyoming Dinosaur Center.  Wyoming is rich in fossils of all kinds, and the museum proudly displays many Wyoming finds, as well as specimens from around the world.  You can see the only Archaeopteryx fossil in North America, and you can even go out to an active dig site.

Enjoy a day in Thermopolis, one of the few you places you can relax in a mineral spring and learn about millions of years of history.

Short Time in the Big Apple: Lower East Side

By Jeff Burns

My wife and I made a quick trip to New York City during winter break, and since it was February, we decided to make it as indoors as possible, concentrating on museum visits. We got a good deal on a hotel on 7^th Avenue, near Times Square and conveniently located near several subway stops.  After checking in, we headed to the legendary Katz's Deli, a NYC institution since 1888, made famous in television shows and movies like When Harry Met Sally.  It’s an icon.  You have to go there once.  Honestly, I’ve had better  - and worse - deli food, but it’s an experience.  Like everything else in the city, it’s claustrophobically crowded, and they use a unique, maybe confusing, system that you have to puzzle through.  You’re given a ticket upon entry and you line up at a carving station to order your sandwich. If you want sides and drinks, you line up at other stations.  Your orders get marked on your ticket, and then you try to find a table, elbow to elbow with other patrons. Cash only. I don’t know that we’ll ever go back, but we can say that we’ve done it.

 

Our first museum was the 9/11 Memorial and Museum.  It was kind of a conscious decision to do this first, because we knew that it would make a powerful impact, and it certainly does.  The only place that I can compare it to in terms of the somber tone and mood is the United States Holocaust Museum.  Be prepared.  Every exhibit is incredibly effective at being affective.  The attacks and their aftermath are personalized by the informative and tastefuly done displays.  Lines can be long, but you can purchase advance tickets online.

 

Next, it was off to the Lower East Side, neighborhoods full of history as they were occupied by successive waves of immigrants who made the area their home, Germans then Russian Jews and Eastern Europeans, Italians, Portuguese, Hispanics, Chinese, etc.  The place to start is the Lower East Side Tenement Museum where a former tenement, occupied for over a century until the 1880s, has been restored to represent different stages of its use.  The building itself is only accessible through guided tours, and this is the only downside.  In order to see everything, you have to take every tour. However, we resolved to make it a point to return on every future trip to New York in order to do just that. We took the longest tour, the shopkeepers tour. It started in the lower floor saloon and apartments that belonged to a German family, and we learned about the family, their German neighbors, and their contributions to American culture.  The tour ended with one of the coolest interactive artifacts displays I’ve ever seen in a museum.  The gift shop is a must-see as well. I wanted to read practically every book on sale, and there were hundreds of titles.  Be sure to check out their website before going. They have walking tours of the neighborhood, special events, and extended hours on Thursdays.  You can purchase tickets in advance and get discounts for booking multiple tours.  (Also, teachers get a tour discount – which we only learned about afterwards.)

 

A few blocks away is a quiet little museum that is well worth a visit, the Museum at Eldridge.  It is a beautifully restored Orthodox synagogue built by Russian Jews in the late 1800s. It is still used for services by its small congregation, but it is open for tours conducted by volunteers during the week. The interior is beautiful, and David, our guide, was full of information.  I highly recommend seeing it if you get the chance.

 

And while you’re in the area, take some time to just walk around and think about the changes the area has seen.  It is a huge melting pot of ethnicities, as Chinatown and Little Italy are literally side by side.  Now, it’s the hottest area of Manhattan, and we were told that it’s the hippest place to be, especially at night, and those small 350 square feet tenement apartments that housed families seeking the American dream now might rent for as much $4000 a month.  While you’re exploring, we highly recommend meals at the oldest dim sum restaurant in NYC, the Nom Wah Tea Parlor (cash or Amex only), and have a nosh, a meal, and an egg cream at Russ & Daughters, another iconic deli over a century old, albeit the café in this neighborhood is only a couple of years old.  There’s just too much to do.  We’re already planning future trips!

Short Time in the Big Apple: Uptown

By Jeff Burns

My wife and I made a quick trip to New York City during winter break, and since it was February, we decided to make it as indoors as possible, concentrating on museum visits. We got a good deal on a hotel on 7^th Avenue, near Times Square and conveniently located near several subway stops.   We packed so much into our few days that we were exhausted; we needed a vacation from our vacation.  There’s just so much for history lovers to do and to see!

So, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim, and the American Folk Art Museum will just have to wait until a future trip, but we did spend a Morning at the Museum – the American Museum of Natural History. Like most museums in NYC, it opens late, 10 AM, but my advice is to get there early.  When the doors opened this day, there were probably a hundred people gathered at the door and lines going down the street in both directions.  As the morning passed, it got extremely crowded. 

 

While none of the exhibits came to life while we were there, there is so much life to see in he museum that you could spend days if you wanted.  There are the dinosaurs, of course, including the brand new titanosaur. There are the halls and halls of animal, plant, and mineral specimens.  There are the anthropological and archaeological collections that represent cultures from around the globe.  It’s always a thrill for a teacher to see objects up close that they’ve seen in textbooks. While it’s true that most of the exhibits and spaces look they haven’t changed in a hundred years, the AMNH is a classic.

 

The afternoon was for MOMA, the Museum of Modern Art again, crowded.  Is there any place in NYC that’s not? We’re not generally modern art fans, so we made a quick trip through the most current exhibition, the highlight of which was a video look of recent transgender Eurovision song contest winner  Conchita Wurst gesturing slowly and looking into the camera. However, MOMA has one of the greatest collections of works representing the late 19^th century and 20^th century:  impressionism, post impressionism, expressionism, abstract, surrealism, cubism, dada etc.  If you know works by Dali, Picasso, Chagall, Duchamp, Kandinsky, Miro, Van Gogh, Monet, Warhol, or Brancusi, chances are that they are from the permanent collection of MOMA. I incorporate a lot of art in my history classes, and art is a major area of study for my quiz bowl team, so it’s a real thrill for me to see these great works in person.

Salem Massachusetts: Don’t Get Spooked (Unless You Want)

By Jeff Burns

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I visited Salem Massachusetts for the day.  Of course, I have seen the episodes of “Bewitched” (There is a statue in town  of actress Elizabeth Montgomery as witch Samantha Stevens.), and I knew Salem was the only city in America with an official witch (Laurie Cabot, proclaimed so by Governor Michael Dukakis in the 1970s).  I’ve also read several books about the Salem Witch Trials of the 1690s, and there are a couple of titles on my “to-read” list as I write this blog. While vacationing in Massachusetts, I knew that I had to see for myself whether I’d find the historic or the cheesy.

 

Long story short:  I found both. Let’s get the cheesy out of the way first. Yes, there are numerous psychics, tarot readers, and self-proclaimed witches who have set up shop, many along Pickering Wharf, a quaint and picturesque shopping and dining area.  (Cabot herself opened the first such shop in the early 1970s but has recently retired.) There are also haunted houses and “witches’ dungeons”  where live and wax figures frighten tourists.   Then, there’s the Salem Witch Museum, which probably attracts most tourists to Salem.  Located in a former church on Salem Common, the museum purports to present the story of the hysteria and trials.  The sanctuary has been converted into a theater-in-the-rectangle for the presentation.  Above the visitors’ heads, there are 10 or so 3D scenes recreating elements of the story with mannequins, narration, and sound and lighting effects.  While much of the history is sound, you get the sense that the melodramatic (one scene depicts the devil) script hasn’t changed in fifty years.  When the show is over, visitors go to a small exhibit area for a superficial docent talk about witchcraft trials and then the gift shop which has a decent selection of books and an extensive collection of every cheesy witch and magic related item of merchandise imaginable.  Honestly, I’m not sure if I can recommend the Salem Witch Museum; I kind of wish we had used that time elsewhere.

At Pickering Wharf

For example, we could have visited the House of Seven Gables, the 17^th century museum that inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne’s work by the same name.  It’s one of many house tours in Salem, representing different eras in Salem’s long history. The Phillips House dates to the 1800s. You might also see the Pickering House or the Ropes Mansion, just to name a few.  There are also guided and self-guided walking tours available, focusing on the trials, Hawthorne, ghosts and spirits, and other facets of Salem’s history.

 

If you’re interested in maritime history, be sure to go to the National Park Service Visitors Center for great information.  You can visit the Customs House, and Salem also boasts the New England Pirate Museum.

The highlight of our day in Salem, however, was the Peabody Essex Museum, which we didn’t even know existed.  The Peabody Essex is a fantastic art and cultural history museum that got its start in the collections of objects brought home by Salem’s sea captains and sailors who sailed the world.  The collection of Asian, African, and Native American artifacts is amazing. Asian export art is a key part of the exhibits, and visitors can see the result of the meeting of East and West.  There is much to see, and a visitor can easily spend hours here.  The PEM also oversees 22 of the historic houses and structures open for visits in Salem.


We only saw a small bit of Salem, but we definitely fell under its spell and hope to get back there someday.