Trawling the ICW, day 5
We made it into St Augustine today around mid day, which left plenty oftime to roam around the old part of town. And when I say "old", I mean OLD! St Augustine is the oldest European city in North America. It's even older than Jamestown in Virginia, which is the oldest English settlement. St Augustine was created by the Spanish, who eventually lost it to the English. But, in a post war deal between England and Spain, the Spanish got it back. The English eventually grabbed the city once again. And, in keeping with the trend of changing landlords, the United States eventually wound up with the property. Obviously, history is a "big deal" in St Augustine. It is such a big deal that they are spending a gazillion dollars to restore a classic old bridge in town. Of course, there was the problem of how to get across the river while they were working on the old bridge. Swimming was ruled out early in the planning process. What they eventually decided to do was to build a second, temporary bridge next to the old one. This temporary bridge even has a drawbridge so that high clearance boats going down the ICW can still get through. Once they finish restoring the old bridge, they will tear down the temporary bridge. It all made perfect sense to the city planners, but some of the tax payers are not as enthusiastic.Frank and I toured the old part of town. The buildings are old old old, but the pizza parlors and apparel stores are a little more contemporary. They have a pretty classy cathedral in town, and we went inside to take a peek. It was the first time I had been on the inside of a church in quite some time. We next wandered over to the old fort and did the tour there. It didn't look like a very fun place to do a tour of duty in the 1600s, but it had a great view of the harbor. We finished our tour with a walk to Flagler College, which had some beautiful buildings. I think you could spend a lot of time wandering the streets of St Augustine. Plus, it had warmed up enough to be t-shirt weather. Life was good on the ICW.
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