A night in St Augustine

After the bird's eye view, it was time to see St Augustine on foot!

Following the helicopter ride, we dropped our bags at the hotel and walked into the Old Town. St Augustine is quite the tourist honeypot, surrounded by strip malls and motels. Walking out into the Old Town takes only a few minutes, but you will travel back in time several hundred years.

At the top of town are the Spanish fortress and city gates, through which you walk to enter...

...hang on, I thought Disneyland was in Orlando??!

A narrow lane leads south from the city gates into the heart of the Old Town. It is a bare patch of cement which at the weekends is hard to see for all the tourists. We had arrived on a Sunday evening, when the weekenders and honeymooners were making the most of their last few hours in town.

They were a hungry bunch judging by the sounds of the slurping and chewing they made as they lugged their shopping bags amongst a quaint (almost twee) assortment of buildings, verandas, courtyards and fountains.

On closer inspection, some of the 'old' buildings turned out to be recent reconstructions, more 1982 than 1892. Others were false altogether, built just to plug in a gap and keep up appearances. At first the place felt too busy, too colourful and too commercialised to appreciate especially when the historical 'sights' include things like America's first wax museum and the original Ripley's Believe It or Not.

Further along though the street opened up, the crowds thinned out and the evening sun began to bathe everything in a warm glowing light. The cathedral looked gorgeous, but was closed to visitors because of mass.

We settled for admiring the exterior view from the plaza in front which was shaded by Spanish moss.

St Augustine was Disneyland before Disney was born. The town was given a makeover by an oil tycoon who wanted to greet visitors with a fantastical resort along his purpose-built railroad. These days the fairy tale hotels with their colonnades and spires are home to a college and the city's town hall.
We strolled the seafront at sunset, when the last of the evening night glinted off the lighthouse...


...and the Bridge of Lions crossed over boats bobbing in the harbour.

A perfect end to a perfect day?

Not yet, because now it was time for some beer! First stop was the A1A Ale Works on the cathedral plaza, where they make their own ales on the premises. The IPA and brown ale were fantastic, though a bit strong for English tastes at 5.4%. The food looked delicious as well, but came such in huge portions we felt we couldn't do it justice.

Later we found an old watermill with a tavern on top named (you'll never guess) the Milltop.

The place was a bit scruffy, seemingly assembled from planks found on the beach after a shipwreck and tied together with mosquito netting. We loved it. We had several bottles of Sam Adams with our nachos, quesadillas and other tasty nibbles. They have live music every night and that evening a chap was strumming guitar and singing, every bit as rough and ready as the premises. When he took a break they played 60s rock on the jukebox.

Nearly 500 years after Ponce de Leon first landed here searching for the Fountain of Youth, St Augustine remains a great place to dip into!