St. Augustine, FL (03-14-13)

St. Augustine was settled in 1565  by Pedro Menendez de Aviles, a Spanish explorer. It wasn’t acquired by the United States until 1821.
 

Paul and I decided that the best way to see this city, whose roads resemble sidewalks to a truck as large as ours, is by trolley. We chose “the Red Train”.  They run continuously throughout the city, with the driver rattling off interesting information as he drives.  You can get on and off at will, exploring as long as you like. The bonus to this approach is that when we had a driver that spoke so fast we couldn’t understand him, we simply got off the trolley and waited for the next one.  Problem solved.

Being on the water, St. Augustine boasts both a lighthouse and a fort. Standing at the top of the lighthouse  affords great views of the beaches and the city of St. Augustine. During the Civil War, the confederacy ordered the light to be removed. The mayor had it buried and when the Union army arrived and demanded it, he refused to reveal its whereabouts.

The Fort is named Castillo de  San Marcos, and the current fort was built in the late 1600s after the previous 9 wooden forts burned down.  It is the oldest masonry structure in the U.S.  Built of locally available Coquina stone (shell fragments and quartz grains), the walls were painted white, with red accents, to match the Spanish flag. The 17 ft thick walls have never been breeched by fire power, and the fort  has never been captured by force- it has always changed hands through treaties.

The Spaniards inside the fort used an interesting psychological weapon when attacked.  After a day of cannon bombardment, they would sneak outside under cover of darkness and  re-paint any damage to the wall white again, psyching out the enemy.

The town grew further in the late 1800s when Henry Flagler, co-founder of Standard Oil,fell in love with the town and spent a lot of time and money improving rail access to the town and building luxury hotels. The early hotels were only open 3 months a year, and were so exclusive, if you rented a room, you had to rent it for the entire 3 months, regardless of how long you actually stayed in it. He hired Thomas Edison to run electricity throughout the hotel Ponce De Leon, but the concept was so new, the guests were afraid they would be electrocuted if they flipped the light switch.  Flagler hired almost 100 people to go from room to room, turning lights on and off for guests. This hotel now houses Flagler College.

Another of the Flagler hotels, Hotel Alcazar, now houses the Lightner Museum.  It was bought by Otto Lightner to house his many collections.  He was a “collector of collections”, which sounded interesting to us, so we checked out the museum.  

My favorite collection was of old musical instruments- mostly player pianos.  We were there in time to see and hear a demonstration of several of them.  I also enjoyed the old typewriter collection.  This one was made before the QWERTY keyboard design.  Other than that, it was just a bunch of…..stuff.  A collection of buttons, a room full of leaded glass, etc. We were in and out pretty quickly, not really having felt we got $20 worth..

We made a brief stop at the Presbyterian Church, also built by Flagler.  It was built to honor his daughter, who died in childbirth.  He paid for round-the-clock labor, so the church would be finished in time for the first year anniversary of her death.

This church is gorgeous, both inside and out.  We were hoping to take a tour, but instead, we arrived just in time for the weekly organ recital.  With hundreds of people in the audience, we decided the tour would be too crowded and moved on to explore something else.

 

Our trolley route took us down Magnolia Street, supposedly one of the most photographed streets in the world.  The Live Oaks that line the street make a stunning canopy over the road, which is actually much prettier than it shows in this picture.

With one of the museums we were interested in being closed for renovations, we had a spare few hours on our hands.  Paul was interested in checking out the  nearby Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum, so we made that our last stop in St. Augustine.

About half of the displays were things I not only had no interest in, but things I didn’t even want to look at.  I dodged past those to get to the things I found of interest to me. 

I enjoyed this display of a matchstick model of the Cathedral of Notre Dame. It took 3 years to build and contains 174,000 matchsticks.  The artist, Patrick Acton, used 3 gallons of glue to put it together.












Any boy would love to play with this display- the worlds largest moving Erector model.  It is 1/12 the size of the original Ferris wheel and stands 21.3 feet tall and contains 19,507 pieces.  It was moving the whole time we were there.

Believe it or not, this  portrait is made completely out of Lego blocks.

Last but not least, this was fun.  The idea is to read the colors.  But you have to say what color the word is, not what the word says.  It takes a little practice to be able to do it!

Originally, we planned to spend a week in St. Augustine, and there was certainly enough of interest there to keep us busy, but we couldn’t find an RV park that had more than 4 nights available, so we stayed the 4 nights, then moved on.