Florida, St. Augustine - Friday, December 6, 2013 - The Nation's Oldest City

The weather today was in the mid-80s, it was a beautiful day for a ride to St. Augustine.  I had such a good time today.

Along the way we stopped in the town of Neptune Beach to take a walk along the beach to pick up some shells.

 

We weren’t the only ones out enjoying the beach

 

 

 

We stopped at the Flying Iguana for lunch.  We were lucky enough to snag one of the outside tables.

We had an amazing queso dip and chips for an appetizer.  After seeing the size of it we decided on just one taco apiece for lunch.  The waitress recommended three, I’m glad we didn’t take her recommendation.  The tacos were delicious.  They had tacos made of some things you wouldn’t normally think of coming in tacos – like the one Greg had, it was called a “Southern Comfort”.  It had a southern fried chicken tender, redeye gravy and pickled okra (he said it was good).

After lunch we rode on to St. Augustine the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in the continental United States.  They have begun to commemorate 450 years of unbroken history.  It was founded in 1565.

We went first to the Castillo de San Marcos.  Construction on this fortress began in 1672 and was completed some 20 years later.

 

It is built of coquina stone which is a locally quarried soft shell rock.

 

 

It supposedly didn’t become brittle and crumble under cannon fire.  Obviously that is true since it is still standing.

This is a hot shot furnace used to heat cannonballs so that when they hit wooden ships the ships would catch on fire.

 

 

The cannons were supposed to be fired at 2:30, so we waited.  I wanted to get a picture of the cannonball coming out of the cannon.

When the cannon went off, it was so loud I jumped and just got a picture of the sky.

The fort overlooks Matanzas Bay.  There were lots of boats on the bay today.  I thought this one was particularly interesting.

 

 

They had to raise the bridge to let a barge and a tall sailboat through.

The Old City gates are made of the same coquina stone as the fort.

St. Georges Street is for pedestrians only and has shops on both sides.

And more shops veering off the main street

This is supposed to be the oldest wooden school house.  It is one of the oldest wooden structures in the city.  The sun was shining from the wrong direction for me to get really good pictures this afternoon.

A couple of my pictures of the architecture did turn out ok.

 

 

We didn’t get to see nearly all of the city today, but the weather forecast is looking good for us to make a return trip – need to drink from that Fountain of Youth!!