Our New Home has PIRATES and Chocolate!
Our New Home
St. Augustine is Old!
It was founded in 1565 by Pedro Menéndez de Aviles and is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the United States. St. Augustine has been under Spanish, English and American control since it’s founding. We spent a great deal of time walking around town just reading about the history of the local buildings.
Downtown
Downtown is a very quaint area rich with history and also modern charm. We enjoyed browsing the local art galleries and finding some beautiful churches and buildings many of which were funded by Henry Flagler.
Henry Flagler’s Influence
St. Augustine in its modern form primarily exists because of Henry Flagler. Most of the beautiful churches and hotels in town were funded by him. He even had railways built to allow people to travel down to Florida and all the way to the Keys. He viewed Florida as an ideal destination so he made it one!
Impenetrable Fort
The kids have become more interested in Spanish as we explore the strong Spanish influence here in town. They really enjoy visiting the Castillo De San Marcos, a fort built to protect the Spanish trade route to South America. The fort was made out of a locally occurring shell limestone called coquina. Coquina turned out to be impenetrable to cannon balls and thereby protected the fort from pirates and invaders!
There be PIRATES in these here parts!
With all of that Spanish gold traveling past, the area was well known to Pirates! Just across from us on the dock are the Black Raven and the Queen Anne’s Revenge pirate ships. It has been fun to get to know the pirates and we have learned so much about pirates here they may need there own post!
Fun for Kids too!
With all of the historical charm and modern boutique vibe, St. Augustine was surprisingly interesting to both kids. We arrived in town just in time for O’s 4th birthday and we had a great time celebrating at Adventure Landing a local fun park.
Tourist for the Day
We decided to play tourist for the day and took a Red Train tour around town. The tour was full of interesting facts and let us hop on an off visiting different local sites. This is a fun way to see around town especially if you are visiting by boat and don’t have a vehicle. We particularly liked the Whetstone Chocolate factory tour and tasting!
Sharks!
The kids found sharks teeth on a local beach and learned some fascinating things about them. For instance you are much more likely to find black sharks teeth than white. The black teeth are fossilized and there are many more of them in the sea than freshly lost white teeth.
With so much to see and do, St. Augustine is worth a longer visit. We look forward to spending much more time here!