St. Augustine (Day 4)

On our last day in Florida we drove from Jacksonville down to St. Augustine. We only had about half a day to spend there until we had to drive home but we enjoyed it. I loved the Spanish architecture in the city and it is a very nice place to visit. The only thing I didn't like was how touristy the city is. Since it is the oldest town in America it is not built for the masses of people who visit. It makes it hard to drive around the city but luckily we were able to park and just walk around the town.

With limited time we tried to choose the activities that looked the most interesting and that would give us the most for the money (this place is a bit pricey). We decided to do the tour of Colonial Quarter. We had an awesome tour guide, Grimm and it was really interesting to hear the history of the city.

Mike got to participate in a demonstration of what it was like to be in the infantry. Grimm asked all the kids but then he needed some adults to help. I loved how he explained to the kids that they have a fun organ and that for adults that organ just shrivels up and falls out at a certain point. Luckily 4 adults in the audience still like to have fun and Mike was one of them :)

We also got to see a two room house that 5 people lived in. It was smaller than the apartment that Mike, Dan and I live in. Just one bed

We climbed to the top of the watch tower and had a nice view of the Castillo de San Marcos. We could see the ocean behind the fort. It took 107 years of the people asking for a fort that couldn't be burned down for the queen to give them one and then another 23 years for it to be built! This one is a big contrast to fort caroline we saw the day before (much much better).

Look! The cannons aren't facing each other! Much better to have them facing your enemies

After the tour and the fort, we attempted to just drive around the city and just look at the other stuff we didn't have time to do. While we were driving we found a church that I thought was really pretty and I couldn't resist taking pictures.

On our way out we stopped by the St. Augustine lighthouse. We decided $10 a person to climb a lighthouse was a bit much so we opted to just look at it.

We had fun in St. Augustine but I wish we had more time to really explore and go to more of the forts and check out the beach. Maybe next time we go down to Florida :)