More Splitsville than Nashville - April 2017 - Day 1 - Exploring St Augustine & Ghosts & Gravestones

[Redrach1903]

Quick recap; I am Rachael (32) and my husband is Chris (31). We went to St Augustine to visit our friend Hanne for 3 nights and then spent 13 nights in a villa in Orlando (Sunset Lakes).

Travel Day is here

Thursday 13th April

The day started at 3am initially as per usual on my first day in Florida, but I was too tired to get up properly. I then heard Chris stirring. He shot up, stood in front of the window and (imagine a very concerned tone here) said "babe, where ARE we?" So funny! I giggled and reminded him we were at Hanne's in St Augustine. He soon remembered and went for a pee and then came back to bed.

I managed to get back to sleep, but was up for real at 6am. I sat and played with my Fitbit to get it onto the right time zone. I had to do it manually for some reason and took a fair bit of fiddling! I got there in the end though. Speaking of activity trackers, I forgot to mention on the travel day report that Chris bought himself a Garmin at the airport. Apparently that suited him better than a Fitbit as it can calculate yardage on golf courses.

I jumped in the shower and Chris got up not long after that. We both got ready for the day and sat outside waiting for Ingrid to appear. It was a lovely Florida morning. A bit cooler than we are used to (we normally go in May), but you could tell it was going to warm up soon Besides, St Augustine is always a few degrees cooler than Orlando. Ingrid came through soon enough and was getting ready to leave for the hospital to see Hanne, so we chatted to her for a bit and we left at around the same time. She said she would call as soon as she knew what time Hanne would be getting released from hospital so that we could be back to see her. We did offer to go with Ingrid to the hospital, but she insisted we enjoy our day in St Augustine.

So we left the house at 8. It was a bit cloudy now, but a pleasant 22 degrees. We drove to Oasis for breakfast. Ingrid had recommended it as a nice local place.



The place is like one big advert. Literally any space was filled with ads for lawyers, accountants, doctors, handymen etc. Even the table tops and mugs! Haha!





We were seated straight away, but it did take a minute for our server to tend to us, although he did apologise for the wait. Chris ordered a coffee and I ordered a hot tea (always careful to say hot as I don’t want an iced tea thank you very much). For food I ordered the short stack with bacon and Chris had the 2 egg special. It came with biscuits, but he didn’t want them, so he asked for a fruit bowl instead.





All very tasty and a nice start to the day Total was $16.99 and we left $20. No over tipping today as the service wasn’t that great to be honest.

We left at 8.50 and headed for the city centre. It was a longer drive than we remembered and we were held up at the bridge as there were a few boats needing to pass!





We spotted these guys demonstrating how NOT to be safe at work! Yes, that's a ladder he is balancing on….



It felt nice and familiar once we eventually got over the bridge!



We followed signs for parking and ended up in a garage which charged $12 for the whole day. Not ridiculous, but we later realised we could have got parked cheaper elsewhere. Ah well.

Have you ever seen a prettier parking garage?! Ha!



As we walked out of the garage we saw some familiar sites from our 2013 visit.





The first thing I wanted to do was book the ghost tour for tonight. It soon became apparent that St Augustine is exactly like Edinburgh in that there are about 25 million different ghost tours to choose from! Luckily, I had done my research and I knew the one I was looking for (Ghosts and Gravestones). We found the booth soon enough and went to get our tickets. They only had a couple of time slots available, so we chose the later one (8.45pm) so that we could go out for tea first. The cost was $25.99 each before tax. I used my debit card to pay for the tickets. I am not really sure why to be honest. I don’t think I was ready to dive into my dollar stash yet. Haha! Anyway, Chris noticed on the receipt that the lady had charged us for 3 tickets! Lucky he was paying attention cos I certainly wasn’t! She sorted out the refund and we were on our way.

We crossed the road over to the fort. Its official name is Castillo de San Marcos and it is oldest masonry fort in the continental United States. Yes I totally googled that. We didn’t pay to go in properly, we just had a look around the outskirts.











We then walked the entire city. I didn’t really take much notes of this part as we just walked and walked and walked. It was lovely and it really is a beautiful and interesting city.

Loved that the pavements had sea shells in them



Here's Chris working out our bearings!



Chris stopped for the loo and I nipped out the back of the toilet building to take a photo of the marina. Lovely.



Ingrid called us now to let us know that Hanne would be getting home around 2/3pm. Great news!

We walked all along the shore and saw lots of funky looking houses and the Headquarters for the Florida National Guard!







We then went down some back streets where we stumbled on the oldest house.







We also spotted some Easter decorations including this monstrosity. Thanks for the nightmares St Augustine!



We eventually found ourselves in familiar territory as Hanne had taken us down this street in 2013!



We found a wee arcade type place with lots more shops, so we had a look around. I immediately spotted the first Disney merch of the coming weeks





I think it was in this shop that I bought myself some new earrings. I just needed wee studs, nothing exciting. Chris got himself a new chain as he broke his at work!



What you doing out of Hogwarts?!



From here we walked down the Spanish Street and onto St. George Street and had a mosey around.















We stopped at a place called Stogies for a juice. We both chose cans of Diet Dr Pepper, but as soon as we tasted them we knew they weren’t right and sure enough they were massively out of date! Chris went back in with them and got me a diet coke and himself dome sparkly fruity water which he hated and threw away. Successful pit stop then! Haha!



[continued in next post]