Pizza and a Coastal Drive aka Day 4

We spent some time lingering at the pool today as we were getting ourselves to adjust to the time and the temperature. Half of our party had a timeshare presentation to attend, so the rest of us ordered some pizza to go, grabbed an entire roll of paper towels from the condo, and mapped out the scenic route back to St. Augustine to see the fort Castillo de San Marcos. The scenic route included a drive through Flagler Beach which has a home featured on Beachfront Bargain Hunt Renovation and yes I saw the home and it was super cool for this HGTV fan  

So, we've all been told that the United States settlement started out in Jamestown, Virginia, but this city St. Augustine claims to be "the oldest city in America." So how can that be? Well, since we love history, we mapped out the scenic route north and kept telling the kids "just 10 more minutes" as we trudged along the coastal highway. My driving partner and I knew it was only about 10 minutes longer to take this way but it was a million times more beautiful and lovely.

We passed through Flagler Beach, which I've seen on House Hunters Renovation and drove through other beachy spots that made us question why we pay to live in California. When we arrived at our destination, we remembered. The humidity.

So St. Augustine claims to have been settled by the Spanish 42 years before Jamestown was. Juan Ponce de Leon, who many streets are named after here, explored this area after landing in 1513. Then 52 years later Pedro Menendez de Aviles founded the settlement with about 2,000 who set sail from Spain in search of...a better life? Free land? Riches? Gold?

There were Natives there of course, the Timucua Indians, who were coerced to convert to Catholicism. Sir Francis Drake, a British pirate, landed and sacked the town. Because of the constant threat of outside enemies, in 1672 the Spaniards constructed Castillo de San Marcos and it was our first destination today. 

The mask mandate on federal property was harder to swallow as the temperatures were climbing today. It's warming up! We talked to rangers and learned a lot about the fort, while the kids walked through rooms and learned about how the town was originally Spanish, 

then under the 1763 Treaty of Paris it was ceded to Great Britain becoming the 14th colony, The 1783 Treaty of Paris (yup, there's were two!) then ceded back to Spain because apparently there were only 13 colonies in the new United States of American, then through the Adams-Onis Treaty in 1819 it was ceded to the United States. So Florida is the forgotten 14th colony huh? Who knew??? 

I hyperlink these things so you can double check my history lesson - which I found fascinating. Who says you only learn at school :)

So we hike around the fort, find a park called Project Swing for kids to run around, and wait for the other half of our party who may have very well bought another timeshare...we don't really know.

Once they arrive, we find that on a weeknight, nearly all of the places Yelp has directed us to for dinner are closed, and we eventually find ourselves not at a seafood restaurant but a BBQ joint. Yup - BBQ in a beach town - go figure! I did capture this cool shot of what claims to be the oldest wooden schoolhouse in America. Who am I to argue?

The food was decent, nothing to write home about, but the place was big and allowed for us to have lively and loud chats about finances, the stock market, kids, vacations, COVID, and whatever else entered our minds. A nice night spent around a table with decent food and superb company.

Group shots before we left and another hour drive back to the condo and the anticipation of our next big day.