St. Augustine, Florida

St. Augustine Florida is such an intoxicating city.  There is such a great amount of REAL history that has been preserved.  The place is flooded with museums of all sorts, historic relics, food, and shops.  AND, there is a very authentic and continuous history covering about 5 centuries.

We were here about 4 years ago, (see my old mention of it here) but we budgeted out only a brief stop.  We knew we needed to get back, and to spend more time here.

As a tourist, there are somethings I really like about certain towns.  I love rich history.  I love access to that history.  Nice restaurants and shopping don't hurt.

I know this may sound odd, but I like easy travels.  There are a lot of things to do in this part of Florida, and places are generally pretty easy to get to.  AND getting around St. Augustine is easy.

There are so many places here and there that I want to see.  There are still about 15 states that I haven't made it to yet.  As we travel, there are places we visit- and we are happy to say that we have been there.... but there is no reason to go back.  St. Augustine is not one of those places.  St. Augustine is a place I hope to go back to many more times.

On this trip we made sure to allow ourselves more time than the last time we were here.  Still, there are things we weren't able to make it to.

We did buy one of the Ripley's Museum multi-attraction tickets.  In general, we were very happy with this.  It is always fun running through a Ripley's Odditorium.  This one is no exception.

We also used their Red Train while in town.  You can buy a three day ticket for the train which lets you get on and off of the trolley at 20 different stops around town.  I love these kind of deals.  You can pretty much get to anywhere you want in town, and the train drivers explain the sites and history.  We had a great driver that we kept getting who was very informative and entertaining.  I think her name was Cheryl.

We also did their "Ghost Train" one evening.  Ghost Tours can be so hit or miss.  On this tour, they handed out EMF readers and a weird green dotted flashlight thing.  We were then taken to two locations and told a little about things that had happened in the area.  It was kind of fun seeing the town at night and all, but next time I will likely stick to a straight forward historic tour. 

More on some of the places we saw later......