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| From the Lighthouse Keeper's house |
February 12th - Wednesday 49 degrees - rainy and very windy
On Monday the weatherman suggested it might be a good day finally, so we took a chance and dressed in layers and drove to St. Augustine for a day of sightseeing.
St Augustine is the oldest, continuously occupied European settlement in the United States. As we remember from our first history classes. Ponce de Leon discovered the area in his search for the legendary Fountain of Youth, in 1513.
We did a walking tour through the Old City and one area I was especially interested in was the Spanish Military Hospital Museum. The guides did an re-enactment of the daily life of patients and staff in a reconstruction of a military hospital of the second Spanish colonial period. Five exhibit areas illustrated medical practices of the time and included an apothecary with period artifacts. I was amazed at how many of the instruments used in the surgery suite are still used today.
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| Our guide and the admitting doctor |
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| Surgeon's Tools |
There are many beautiful churches and I couldn’t walk past without snapping a picture of a couple of them. Memorial Presbyterian Church is located close to Flagler College. The college was started by Henry Flagler in the late 1800’s.
There were many museums to tour and we started to tour the Government House Museum on King Street, which shows exhibits that blend technology with historic artifacts to tell the story of St. Augustine’s founding based on research by the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida. After viewing some of the contents of the museum we checked our time and we were over due for our parking permit and we were unsure how far away our car was, so we left, then we found our car quickly along with a parking ticket, which cost us $15.00. So we made an extra contribution to the city of St. Augustine!!
After leaving downtown St. Augustine, we drove to across the Lion Bridge to St. Augustine Lighthouse and Museum on Anastasia Island. St. Augustine’s maritime past is reflected in this working lighthouse and restored keeper’s house. Lou and I climbed the 219 steps to the top of the lighthouse to enjoy the panoramic view of the city and its beaches.
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| Some of the tools used in the lighthouse |
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| View from the top of the lighthouse |
Highlights of the exhibits included illustration showing the lives of the lighteners and the US Coast Guard personnel who were stationed in St. Augustine during World War 11. Shipwrecks also are featured along with the history of shrimping in the area.
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| The entrance to the Lion's bridge |
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| A Ship that was on the River |
It was an interesting and fun day and a day filled with sunshine with temperatures reaching a high of 71 degrees. Indeed, we had picked a good day, as the rest of our week has been very windy, rainy and cold.
On our way home, we stopped and had a seafood dinner at a seafood shack, wasn’t much to look at but the food was delicious, we even had collard green that were cooked to perfection. So much food, that we brought some home and had enough for our dinner last evening.
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