St Augustine is a beautiful
town and is the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in the
US. It has some great history from the Spanish
explorer
Pedro Menéndez de Avilés
occupation in the 1500s when
St
Augustine became the capital of Spanish Florida. In the 1700 the Treaty of
Paris
Spain gave Britain St
Augustine in exchange for
Havana – not sure if
Britain got the
best deal. There is a great Fort which
has been occupied by the different nationalities that have held
St Augustine, we visited
Castillo de San Marcos which was interesting by also it
was well over 30 degrees we didn’t stay too long.
The town more recently was also heavily influenced by Henry Flagler who
was a wealthy American business man in the 1800s, his vision was to turn St Augustine into a
wealthy winter resort. He built some
very impressive hotels which opened in the 1800, the Ponce De Leon hotel was
beautiful then and is still just as marvellous with lots of original features
including Tiffany stained glass windows and Tiffany design dining room chairs,
the hotel actually had electric before the Whitehouse. The building is now a College, I can hardly
believe that students are allowed to occupy this beautiful building but good
news for us is that the students also do very cheap and extremely interesting
tours of the building as otherwise you can only gain access to the exterior and
the entrance hall but with the tour you get to see the dinning room and the
ladies lounge.
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| Ponce De Leon |
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| Ponce De Leon gardens |
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| Ponce De Leon dining room -chair and stainglass windows by Tiffany |
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| Tiffany stain glass windows |
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| Loving the windows and decorative ceilings |
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| More windows |
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| Chandelier in Tiffany room - note the Tiffany colour ceiling which were changed during restoration |
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| Tiffany room |
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| Amazing Eddison clock, electric before the Whitehouse |
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| Amazing ceiling in the entrance hall |
The Alcazar hotel was also developed by Flaglar this is now a gallery
with a few touristy shops and café, is was having some restoration whilst we
were there but it still look very impressive.
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| Alcazar hotel |
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| Courtyard of Alcazar hotel - Mark on bridge |
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| Alcazar hotel - this room was a swimming pool in 1800s |
Also really interesting St
Augustine placed a pivotal role in the Civil rights movement
in the 1960s with various peaceful protests during this time and Martin Luther
King even spent time here.
You can understand why this place gets so busy in the autumn with the
cruising community moving south with its history, cobbled streets, lovely
little shops including some great chocolate shops. Glad we had a chance to stop here, we even
almost relaxed but with hurricane Bertha forming out in the Atlantic
there was still pressure looming over us BUT we almost had made a decision on
what we would do next.
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| Schoolhouse many years ago |
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| City gates |
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| Casa Monica - another Flagler hotel |
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| Look at lovely little turtle in the harbour |
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| Magnum moored in St Augustine |
