A Trip in to St.Petersburg

We are now further north and west of St.Petersburg than we were this past winter.  So it is roughly a 20 mile trip into the city one-way.   On a rainy day a couple of weeks ago John and I decided to make the trip into the city to see Southside With You, a story about a day of courtship between President Obama and his wife Michelle which took place about 20 years ago.  It was a wonderful movie, by the way.  Theaters which show the independent films are few and far between, thankfully we found one in St.Petersburg.  After the movie we stopped to visit Florida's largest new and used bookstore.

Both John and I are voracious readers and I cannot believe that we did not visit this place last winter.

The place is very large, and we wandered from room to room looking at books for about two hours.
I was taken aback when I happened to look up and saw a cat peering intently at me.

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I walked on further into that room and found two more cats, one curled up in a chair sleeping.  We ended up buying about 6 books- but this store's used books are a bit pricey, I can find cheaper used books at thrift stores as well as libraries.  But certainly not the large variety!

After the book store we drove on Central Avenue close to the downtown looking for the mural pictured above.  The pictures on this commercial building are on every outside wall and they tell a fable about an evil giant who stole gold from the local villagers.  Every evening while at the supper table he fed the gold to his dog.  The villagers wanted their gold back and consequently killed the dog.  Every evening, while the giant dined,  the villagers held the dog's head up to the giant's leg so he could feel the dog and feed it gold.  Eventually the village got all their money back.

In the picture above the dog's head is being held up by the villagers.  Quite a fascinating mural!  Yesterday, Labor Day, more painters were planning on covering more walls on the buildings of St.Petersburg.  Not sure whether they were successful, as we had a heavy downpour here in the late afternoon.  August seems to be the rainy month here, of course Hurricane Hermine did not help that situation as she brought heavy rain for several days.