In the Old City of St. Augustine

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Our first stop this morning was the St. Augustine Lighthouse. Like most of the attractions here, if you want to go inside and see things up close, you have to pay admission. Only the gift shops allow entry without fee. After taking a few pictures from outside the fence and buying a patch in the gift shop, we drove into St. Augustine to the Visitor Center.

You have to pay for parking at the visitor center and most other places here. Inside we looked at the few exhibits and bought tickets for the sightseeing train, which is really a trolley that looks trainish. The train is owned by the Ripley's Believe or Not folks, and they allow free parking in their lot. The trolley and the train will take you all over the area, stopping at 22 different places and allowing you to exit or board the trains at any of them. The drivers all give an entertaining and informative narration of all that we pass. It is well worth the fare and I thank my brother, Skip, for recommending this mode. Henry Flagler was responsible for the modern development of the city and his fingerprints seem to be all over the place. We walked down St. George Street, a foot traffic only shopping area, and browsed through some of the shops.

At the Castillo de San Marcos, the fort built by the Spaniards in the 1700's, we admired the views and the cannons. It is quite a fort, one that Kerry says even that fool Custer could have defended. The walls are made of coquina, a local shell stone quarried locally. The fort overlooks Matanzas Bay, and the view is quite beautiful.

We drove south to Fort Matanzas, about 10 miles south of St. Augustine, but it is on an island and we didn't want to wait 45 minutes for the ferry, so we just viewed it from across the river. In the trees above us at the visitor center were a pair of nesting great horned owls.

We thoroughly enjoyed our day; the weather was very nice, sunny and a little cool and windy, but pleasant.

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Photos

Lighthouse
St. Augustine Lighthouse

Statue of Ponce de Leon
supposedly life sized

Castillo de San Marcos
some of the many cannons

courtyard
Castillo de San Marcos

from Castillo de San Marcos
Matanzas River and Anastasia Island

Fort Matanzas
from across the river

great horned owl
outside the visitor center

Comments

[Claudia & Tommy]

weather
WE hate you.(just kidding) The weather here is going to be in the 20's with snow and ice Friday. Hurry up Spring!