Wednesday Feb 19

St. Augustine is even nicer in warm weather than in the gloom and chill we had last time we were here. It's a walkable town with lots of narrow streets and old buildings, some of them stone-built even. Every other building is a restaurant. The rest are tourist shops. It is (still) the oldest continuously inhabited European settlement in the USA.

After a hearty breakfast at the B&B we set off to sail the seas.





It was warm enough even coming back into the wind not to need a jacket.







This is one of the rare welded steel pirate ships complete with radar. It's a tourist attraction.










This is our excursion vessel, the good ship Victory III. We had a 75 minute cruise with a gabbled narration. We got some of it but by no means all.










This is a replica of a 17th century Spanish ship that used to sail these waters.











I couldn't resist this bit of whimsy at a surf shop. Once upon a time it was a Sunbeam Talbot 90.









We also visited the St. Augustine lighthouse. We climbed the 219 steps to the top. There has been something on the site since the Spanish occupation in the 1560s but this dates from 1857. It is still a working aid to navigation, even though it's operated by volunteers. The lady who gave us a guided tour was excellent - she could talk for America but was very informative.





When we got back to the B&B we had a glass or two of wine while sitting on the veranda in the sun all courtesy of our hostess-bliss. Lunch today was ice cream which was all we could manage after our breakfast of bacon, sausage quiche, fresh fruit, juice, coffee......oh, and a muffin, of course!

Location:St. Augustine