We went to church in Byron on Easter, fellowshipped for a while, and then kept traveling south. After we checked into the hotel, we overcame the horrors of finding street parking near the Colonial Quarter and used google to find an order-at-the-counter seafood place: The St. Augustine Seafood Company. Original name, right? Delicious food, though.
Showing off his bowtie from Mimi
Precious preferred chicken strips- not a big seafood fan
And... off to Castillo de San Marcos! This amazing, coquina structure survived two British naval sieges by effortlessly deflecting cannonballs! It has never been won through conflict, but has only changed hands peacefully through treaties. The cured coquina has small air holes that make it invincible through flexibility. We enjoyed seeing the necessario, with its ingenious water flushing-into-the-bay system. If the British had gotten close enough to that to sabotage it, they perhaps could have inflicted some misery.
Overlooking Matanzas Bay
Bastion selfie
panorama at the top
On Tuesday morning, the kids swam at the hotel, and we floundered with our plans a bit. A stop by the lighthouse made us realize that we didn't want to pay $50 to go up inside a lighthouse.
While we were walking to the lighthouse, our pet sitter texted us that she had entered the house, and all of our animals were thankfully alive and well! We are pretty sure that a garage door with a keypad will be one of our next house projects.
After a quick Subway lunch, we ended up at the St. Augustine aquarium, which was less than 5 minutes from our hotel. New Daddy and the three younger kids enjoyed the extra adventure of snorkeling in the 80,000 gallon tropical fish tank. Precious opted for a canopy tour at the place that shared a parking lot with the aquarium. We made our reservation for the following morning before leaving out.
Precious feeding a ray
Tater and New Daddy snorkeling
That evening, Tater wanted to play on the playground next to the downtown parking garage, so we parked there and hit the Colonial quarter again for some supper. We strolled around, and after calling various sit-down restaurants and realizing they all had 1-2 hour waits, we ended up at Pizzalley again (after we'd already had it for lunch on Monday)! It was still yummy and affordable.
Beautiful sunset across from the Lightner Museum while strolling around
When we parked, there was a peacock in the grass in front of us! The peacocks and pigeons were a lot of fun to watch. The water at Fountain of Youth tasted like sulphur, which the kids didn't really like, but we bottled up a gallon to take home. The guide said to let it sit in the fridge for a few days and then drink it. I bought a datil pepper blend spice grinder. Apparently, the datil pepper is from the Minorcans, who brought it to St. Augustine. And it is an exclusively St. Augustine thing. Sweet heat is my assessment. I had a datil pepper pizza for lunch on Monday, and it was amazing.
The white peacock putting on a show!
Chillin' with Pedro The greeting party
The history we learned at Fountain of Youth was just amazing! It was surprising for us to learn about the rivalry between Britain and Spain for land and money. I had never thought of Georgia and Charleston (or Charlestown) as the front lines of this colonial contest, but they were. The British siege ships had arrived from Charlestown. Governor Oglethorpe of Georgia was always trying to do something to the Spaniards to the south. The Floridian perspective of history is that this was all Spanish Florida in the 1500s... up to Labrador, Canada! We learned that PBS shook things up a bit last year with a documentary asserting that the first Thanksgiving actually took place in St. Augustine!
It seems that people are still arguing over who writes history. As our guide stated, "The ones who get to write history are the ones who win the war, or who have the most money." True, that. We had been to Colonial Williamsburg in September, where we received the standard, Colonial-British perspective. It was totally unexpected for us to benefit from hearing the Floridian-Spanish perspective six months later! What a unique opportunity.
For our road-home supper, we googled "southern food" in Valdosta, and we landed at a delicious place called GG's Southern Kitchen. If you're ever there, it is totally worth checking out! We sat across from an eccentric man who had a "Now this is a piece of history" cane from Africa that he told us the [I admit it was dubious] story behind it. All of this made for a very entertaining meal. Our favorite dishes were the fried okra (breaded from scratch), lima beans, pork chops, fried chicken, and macaroni & cheese. The whole place exuded cooked-from-scratch happiness.
Other things we did: Ripley's Believe it or Not (we kept saying, "I can't believe we are doing this.") and the Pirate Museum. We wished we'd done some less weird things, like maybe the Lightner Museum. Oh, well. It was still a great trip, and we learned a ton.
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