An impromptu vacation to St. Augustine

We had a drive day where tire observation took priority and our destination remained unknown for hours. Over many, many miles, we began trusting that our tire was holding air, and we could finally shift our priority to finding our home for the night.

"You know where I've been wanting to go, but we haven't fit it into our travels yet?" I asked Anthony. "St. Augustine." It was still 3 hours away, but if we pushed ourselves, we could make it by sundown. A few days in St. Augustine made good sense. It seemed like a continuation of our recent pattern: tire troubleshooting, vacation fun, tire troubleshooting, vacation fun. We found ourselves same-day availability at Sun Outdoors St. Augustine, and even secured a 50% off discount using our Passport America membership. It was a steal! And just like that, we were ready to double our drive day and enjoy more vacation fun.

It's no wonder St. Augustine made my travel list; it's rich with history, architecture, and natural beauty. People say it's like finding a little piece of Europe in the United States. This is due to the fact that it's "America's oldest city," or more specifically, the oldest continuously occupied European-established settlement in the lower 48. We can see why people shorten the accolade. But it is true that this settlement happened before those we hear about in history class, like Jamestown and Plymouth. Spanish admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés colonized the region in 1565, and it's remained inhabited ever since. Of course, it's gone through many iterations since then, and became a luxury destination in the late 19th century. But part of the draw is that visitors can enjoy quaint nods to the city's European roots.

Once we settled into our campsite, we dove into research on places to go and activities to partake in. That's when we realized, we could jam-pack our 3 days here and not even see half of what we'd want. This wasn't going to be a place to regroup after our long tire-minded drive. If we wanted to do St. Augustine right, we needed to go back to an old mindset: Road trip Anthony and Nicole!

We didn't hit St. Augustine on our East Coast Road Trip, opting for Daytona Beach instead. Just as well. Had we stopped here, we would have only had a few hours to spend. We moved really fast back then. Compared to the old days, 3 days in one place is a lifetime! We could certainly make a mini-vacation out of it.

Our research yielded our first activity that quickly rose to top priority: Anastasia Island's Arcade Museum. Oh, how we love some good arcade games! You might recall our post about the hidden pinball room that we went to in this Mom's Organic grocery store, which sadly is not there anymore. In fact, the arcade museum that we went to in Daytona also closed down. That's one of the reasons we were thrilled to find this location. But, since it's only open weekends, we had to put it in for day 1, which was a Sunday. Done deal. I planned all our other excursions around it, gladly.

Day 1: Anastasia Island Adventures

Anastasia Island is the waterfront part of St. Augustine, located over the Matanzas River and lined with beaches. Since the Arcade Museum was on our day 1 agenda, I planned some other Anastasia Island excursions for us, starting with coffee and doughnuts. We quickly realized that St. Augustine has no shortage of highly rated food establishments, and all the photos looked so delicious! We could have opted for a Sunday brunch or lunch, but we kept things simple this time. Well, almost simple. My research of cafes led me to Bad Ass Coffee of Hawaii. I've come to the conclusion that if coffee has the word "ass" in it, it's good coffee. Sounds counterintuitive, but in the case of Bad Ass, it makes perfect sense. The name refers to the donkeys that used to haul coffee beans in Hawaii. Name aside, it also had an intriguing menu of specialty coffee drinks and food.

I almost told Anthony we should get coffee and brunch there, but then I noticed Parlor Doughnuts up the street on Google Maps. Why try just one place when we can try two?! I rounded out our itinerary: grab our grub, take it to the beach, and hit the arcade museum on the way back.

First stop: Parlor Doughnuts. Their selections were a little picked over by the time we arrived, but I got the bourbon caramel donut and Anthony got raspberry pistachio. Then onto Bad Ass Coffee, which we easily could have stayed at for a while and enjoyed ourselves. The place was adorable, and a live musician was playing on the outdoor patio. But we stuck with our plan and grabbed our beverages to go. We got the turtle kick and the mocha kick, which we aren't exactly sure what they are, except delicious blended deliciousness, with sauce. They almost tasted like milkshakes, but we're pretty sure they're coffee blended with cream and ice.

Then we headed up the street to Butler Beach, where we had our donuts and then took the rest of our coffees with us for a walk along the ocean. We don't say this lightly, but our donuts were the best we've ever had anywhere. We don't know what this place does to their dough, but it is fluffy, has layers that you'd expect from only the most exquisite pastries, and the flavors were perfect – just sweet enough but balanced with the yeast flavor of the dough. We later discovered that Parlor Doughnuts is a chain, with locations in most states across the country. Where have we been?! Are they this good in every location? Should Anthony and I overhaul our whole life plan and open a franchise?!

After that scrumptiousness, our walk was very necessary. Butler Beach is one of a few beaches in St. Augustine, known for permitting vehicles to drive in the sand. It was perfect beach weather that day, so the beach was expectedly crowded. We hear Butler Beach stays more contained than other beaches along Florida's coast, and we're sure this is true. We can only imagine how crowded Daytona was that day! We had a nice walk along the shore, dipping our feet in the water as we went.

The arcade museum was crowded, too; someone was hosting their birthday party there, so there were a lot of kids and families. Still plenty of machines to enjoy. The arcade is $20 free play per person, all day. They give you a wristband and you can even leave and come back throughout the day if you wish. We mostly played the pinball machines, no surprise, but we also had a skeeball battle, and I partook in some Pacman. I'm proud to say I did get a high score on the Apollo 13 pinball machine! If you go to the arcade museum and see the initials SOG on the leaderboard, that's me. I didn't really figure out how to type my correct initials, so this was the best I could do.

I thought filming my skeeball run would bring me luck, like it did with cornhole. This is what happened.

For the record, I did end up scoring 39,000 points one of my games, so it wasn't all bad!

After the arcade, we returned to normal life for a little while and ran some errands before heading back to our campsite. We needed to rest up for a big day of tourist fun the next day!

Day 2: Exploring downtown...and being let down

Our visit to St. Augustine was shaping up to be a great impromptu vacation, and to make it even better, nature decided to actually play nice for once! After dealing with insane heat and humidity all throughout FL, we now had highs in the 70s and humidity levels keeping around 50%. Perfect vacation weather! We couldn't wait to take full advantage and explore what downtown St. Augustine has to offer.

But as first-time visitors, we needed to orient ourselves. You know what that means...

We have a confession to make, though. After having good luck with lots of hop-on/hop-off trolley tours over the years, recent experiences have been disappointing. We ran into serious issues the last time we took one in New Orleans, when no bus came past our stop and we almost ended up stranded after the last bus took its route.

This time wasn't as bad, but that's because we caught our time crunch early enough to pivot. The trolley routes typically wind and weave through a lot of the same places, which means they're not the most productive way to get from Point A to Point B. On the plus side, though, if you plan your day right, you can get off at one stop, do activities, and then walk a short distance to get on a later stop. This means you miss the narration of those in-between stops, but you can make it through your route more quickly.

We've said it many times on the blog, but tours are only as good as their guide. Nothing against Pepper, the driver of the "Hot Tamale Trolley," but she was just not our vibe. She was so vivacious that the speakers couldn't contain her volume. We also realized quite quickly that she was more frills with less substantial narration.

We got on at Stop 1, the trolley depot, expecting a short tide. We'd just tolerate Pepper until Stop 4. This is a stop close to Castillo de San Marcos, the city's historic fort. It is not the actual fort stop. That's 17. Just one example of how the routes loop around the same areas over and over again. As we traveled those first few stops, we were doing research on places we might want to explore downtown, and Anthony noticed that the fort is a National Monument. That means we could get in for free with our National Parks Pass. Only, we left our pass in our truck. This was a problem. Old Town Trolley lists tons of things to do and offers discounts for many of them, but since this is a federally-owned site, they don't even list it on their brochure, probably because it's not "sponsored." Not researching enough was partly our mistake, but if we had seen "Castillo de San Marcos National Monument" listed anywhere, we would have known to grab our parks pass. It wasn't until we were at the stop that Pepper mentioned people could use their passes to get in, but that doesn't help if people didn't bring them!

Despite so many stops being close together, the only ones near Stop 1 were at the end of the route: 20, 21, and 22. That meant we were far away from our truck and had little choice if we wanted to get our parks pass. We begrudgingly decided to ride the full loop and return to Stop 1. That was a lot of Pepper spray stinging our senses!

A bigger problem than Pepper, though, is that Old Town Trolley says the full loop takes about an hour. That's a lie. Over an hour and a half later, we were still on the trolley. And since it circles the same areas over and over again, we heard the same narration a dozen times. We also had to hear Pepper's shticks a dozen times. "MY NAME'S PEPPER AND YOU'RE ON THE HOT TAMALE TROLLEY!" "WE'RE ROLLIN' ON OUT! ROLLIN, ROLLIN, ROLLIN, RAWHIIIIIIDEEEEEE!"

Not every hop-on/hop-off tour we've taken repeats the narration more than once per route, but it seemed like they ran out of things to say about the history of St. Augustine. That's strange considering it has the most history of any city in the continental US. We learned about Flagler College and how it used to be the Ponce de Leon Hotel back in the day. It and the other surrounding hotels were all built in 1888. We learned it about 8 times. Granted, the college is a beautiful piece of architecture, so we could at least marvel at that 8 times.

But we wanted to learn more about the history before 1888. Besides saying that it's the "country's oldest city," the Spanish settlement part of the tour was totally lost.

We also struggled with the old town buildings that were supposed to still resemble the architecture of Spain and Britain. This has happened before at other places we've visited, where travel media outlets claim these are places that "look like Europe but are in the US." Sorry for the snobbery, but no. The buildings here looked like they were trying too hard. We've both been to Britain and Spain. Besides little glimpses of their heritage, the rebuilt downtown streets were lined with facades.

As we approached the 2-hour mark on the Tamale, we were getting hungry. By stop 20, we couldn't take it anymore! Pepper's narration, the uncomfortable trolley seats, our hunger, our fear that we'd run out of time to do any fun activities that day...we needed off! As we pulled into the stop, I noticed Thai Street Cafe across the street – one of many restaurants that had made our shortlist when we Googled places the day before. We jumped off that trolley and ran straight over there.

Thankfully, our opinion of St. Augustine's food has held strong. Our lunch was delightful. Anthony got the chicken pad thai and I got orange chicken. The chicken was typical wholesale beaded tenders, but the flavor profile tasted authentic and everything was prepared great. Lovely presentation of the plates, too. I love a good meal bowl.

Now that we were nourished, we were able to figure out our game plan. We were done with the trolley. We should have probably just taken it downtown and then explored on our own, before possibly hopping back on with a hopefully less irritating guide. But hindsight is 20/20. If we wanted to go to the Castillo de San Marcos, we needed to head back to our truck and get our National Parks Pass. Since we disembarked the trolley at Stop 20, we were close enough to the beginning of our route that it was an easy walk.

We hoped to drive the truck further into town and park near the fort, but we struggled to find parking, and all the lots cost money. We had gotten parking for free at Stop 1 because we were trolley ticket holders. We wasted more time circling around trying to find a spot, but eventually we got free 2-hour street parking about .6 miles from the fort. Good enough.

Here's what we learned about the fort during our many, many times passing it on our tour:

It's the 10th iteration of the fort, after the first 9 burned down. The most recent fire was started by pirates. After that, they realized, hmm, maybe it needs to be built out of rock and not wood. In the words of Pepper, "Yuh THINK?!" Now it's the largest masonry fort in the continental US. It's made of coquina, limestone filled with crushed seashells. Later, the coquina was covered with plaster.

That's it. No tales of the earlier fires. No details of any battles or sieges, except that the fort was never seized by enemies.

Time to enter into the fort and learn more. You can walk the grounds for free, but it's $15 per person to go inside, unless you have a pass. Our Parks Pass was good for a family of 4, so we both got in for free. Good thing, too. We went inside seeking out more opportunities to learn, but we found the displays sparse. There were exhibits that told little bits and pieces of the different settlers and military personnel, and how cannons are fired. But where was the history of the fort? Even the unique flag flying at the fort and other places around town, a sort of jagged looking red X against a white backdrop that you can see in some of our pictures. Nowhere did we find a description of it!

It's possible we missed some things because it was pretty crowded when we went – lots of field trips. But we decided to head out and do our research later.

• The Spanish constructed the fort between 1692-1695.
• It's true that the fort was never seized and only changed hands in treaties. It did undergo some sieges, like when the British attacked in 1702.
• The real story of the fort's iterations is that there were originally 9 separate forts protecting the settlement. These were made of wood. Over time, they deteriorated from weather and easily burned during raids. It was the pirate raid in 1668 that was the final straw. The masonry fort was built as a result.
• The flag is the Cross of Burgundy, representing the Spanish military and Spanish sovereignty in Florida from 1565-1763 and again from 1784-1821.

While walking the grounds, we did notice a display that showed a close-up slab of the coquina. According to our necessary further research, it's protective against shattering if a cannonball hits it, due to its porosity. Instead, the balls would either get swallowed by the compression of the material upon the strike, or they'd bounce off. That's a cool tidbit of info, but it brings us to our final bit of research:

• The accolade of "largest masonry fort in the continental US" comes with many qualifiers, and you know we love a good qualifier! If you're wondering about Fort Jefferson in Dry Tortugas National Park, you aren't alone. I thought about it, too...but since it's off the coast of Florida, it's technically not in the continenal US. Come on, though! And as we expected, it's not just the "masonry" definition, but that it's made out of coquina. There are other stone and brick forts in the US that are larger, of course.

Alright, so we might be tearing our experience apart here a little bit, but we did have enjoyable parts of our day. First of all, the views from the fort are beautiful. What a perfect place to construct a fort to watch for invaders. There were water views in multiple directions, from all different levels! Then we had equally lovely views of the city.

We also salvaged our day at the very end with some tourist activities that were more aligned with our St. Augustine interests: food, nature, and history that was actually explanatory without us feeling the need to research further. That's the lesson we took from our day. Maybe we need to stop with the hop-on/hop-off tours and just choose the attractions that are most in alignment with how we want to explore, and then find more streamlined ways to get there. Now that we were free of the tour constraints and got our big fort visit out of the way, we could steer our own ship.

There is a lot more to say about our final excursions of Day 2 in St. Augustine, and then our 3rd and final day, where we're joined by a special companion. We'll pick it up in our next blog post.

To be continued.