St Augustine

• So much history and so much to do. St Augustine is great. The city marina was full for the weekend. We had to go across the Indian River to the Anchorage Motel and Marina. It was probably a good thing. The city marina is right in the heart of town. Where we stayed you had to walk across the bridge every time you wanted to do something. As John Wayne would say "a good stretch of the leg." I'm glad we were there on a weekend, there was construction going on at the bridge and the noise would have been deafening.
• On Friday night we met Rita and Robert W. for cocktails on their boat. We went for a walk around town and to dinner at an outdoor cafe, Crab Grabbers. The music and atmosphere really made the night.
• Saturday morning we went across the bridge and took Ripley's sightseeing train. The ticket is good for 3 consecutive days and you can get off and reboard at any of the stops. The tour takes about 2 hours and shows you everything you want to see. We stayed on the train until the end and then went on our own.
• St. Augustine's age of 442 years may not seem significant, but the city is indeed very old. Despite seemingly endless colonial calamities, including fires, floods, destructive storms and wars and even starvation in its first two hundred years of life, St. Augustine has survived and now flourishes in this new century.
• Our 1st stop was at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Augustine. It was founded on the feast day of St. Augustine in 1565 by Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles. Father Thomas Hassett a priest from Ireland, with assistance from Spain, built the church of coquina stone in 1793. It was completed in 1797 by another Irish priest, Father Michael O'Rielly. There's a shrine to St. Patrick, patron saint to thousands of Irish Priests who served in the New World for over 400 years.
• This is the oldest continuously active Catholic faith community in the continental United States. The great fire of 1887 seriously damaged the building but left its wall intact. It was rebuilt the same year. Actually it was rebuilt three times. The stained glass windows, the sanctuary murals, the murals above the vestibule are all works of art. You don't have to be Catholic to be impressed with this cathedral.
• We went to lunch at an Irish Pub. They don't make corned-beef sandwiches like the N.Y. Jewish delis. We think there was meat on it. The black and tan was good and cold.
• First tour was Flagler College. Henry Flagler was a self-made millionaire who, with John D. Rockefeller, founded the Standard Oil Company. Flagler decided to develop St. Augustine into a winter resort for the rich and famous. He built the Ponce de Leon Hotel, this grand gilded age structure still stands today and functions as Flagler College. Many presidents stayed at the hotel. It was $6.00 to $60.00 to stay there, in today's money it would cost $20,000 a week. This included everything except your bar bill. Flagler didn't think the place should be perfect. He believed that only God could make perfection. There's a tile in black that should be white in the entrance, if you know about it you can find it. As we walked through the school we saw the largest collection in the world of Tiffany Windows. The students actually eat in the dining room set up as it was in 1887. The murals and painting of the parlor room, the hand-carved columns of the rotunda all take your breath away. A national landmark, Flagler College has spent more than $23 million restoring the hotel. It's a private, liberal arts college with more than 2,000 students and is one of "America's Best Colleges."