Monday 30 December 2019

Tallahassee


From December 16 till the 26th we were in Tallahassee, house and pet sitting. We never really thought we would stay there, but we are glad we did.


The house we stayed in (not pictured in this blogpost) was lovely, the dogs were super sweet and the city did not feel like a city due to the number of trees everywhere. I can't remember ever seeing such a green city. Although the capital of Florida, Tallahassee has only 192.000 inhabitants and it is very widely spread so it has lots of space, large gardens, parks, forests and greenery.



Like a lot of Southern towns, it has some beautiful older buildings. And there were lots of hidden houses among trees. At a lot of streets there was no parking nor stopping so we couldn't take photos of everything but just driving through (while going from one thrift store to another :)) was lovely.



We took the doggies to this lovely park.



The water reservoir looked like some aliens had landed.



With Christmas lights everywhere, it had something magical.



A lot of streets and houses reminded me of fairytales.



As it is 40 minutes from the Ocean it is not touristic.


And it has lots of parks.



Still, no alligator seen got to love the Winter months!




We'll be thinking back fondly of our time here.



We're now in St. Augustine, a totally different town, very touristic and the house we are staying at is a 5-minute walk from the beach. We'll be here till Thursday and then slowly our trip back home starts, we can barely fit in the car with the amount of luggage!!

Wednesday 25 December 2019

Merry Christmas!


We wanted to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas! The pottery above is made by the owners of the house we are watching. The weather is fantastic here today so we'll have a nice walk in a park today as it is our last day in Tallahassee.


Tallahassee is a very green and widespread city. It is safe and lovely but not a tourist destination at all. If it hadn't been for the house/ pet sit we wouldn't have stayed longer than a day or two but the 10 days flew by and we enjoyed ourselves a lot here.


We visited several cute little historic towns throughout our stay here is the town Havana, a tiny little town, very southern, very quiet.



Like always we visited a few thrift stores, the more isolated places often have the best finds!




The Old Spanish Trail from San Diego, California to St. Augustine -hee painted on the wall- would be great to do, we might do it in the future, we actually have done it partially last year from St. Augustine to New Orleans, but that is just a fraction of this long road!


America is huge and as soon as you are not in a city there is a lot of space, farms, and woods.




We can't get enough of the huge oaks here in the South, some parts are so thickly covered with trees that you can't see the sun, it's quite magical especially when they are adorned with Spanish moss.


This building reminded me of oxidized copper, which I absolutely love.



An old ad, back when Cola was 5cents.



The historic parts are often just one main street as the towns were small, to begin with, and some big houses clearly of rich people. This is the Historic district of Quincy.


At the end of the day, we had an amazing sunset which I, unfortunately, could not really capture.



The next day we went to the St.Marks National Wildlife Refuge. 5$ to enter with a car, 1$ by bike and absolutely amazing. It was very large and everyone there was there to enjoy the birds and nature (lots of bird watchers). You could stop to take pictures as everyone was driving very slow and as the weather wasn't perfect it wasn't crowded.



It was a magical place and very calming.




Lots of birds, a cool Belted Kingfisher on a dried-out tree.


This bird stayed like this, I think it wanted to make itself look big towards us, not sure.


Apparently, there had been a fire a while back as a part showed remains of that, I guess at a very dry time as it was very wet there now.





Remainings of a pier had become a hotspot for pelicans.





 Walking among the dunes where the smaller birds were.


The St.Marks Lighthouse.
The lighthouse and this area have quite the history, if interested you can read it here.




Someone had taken the time to make the deer signs into Rudolf signs for Christmas which was really funny in the mostly very natural environment.


All roads around here are various stages of green, even in the city of Tallahassee, we love it.


An abandoned fairytale-like house.


With even an abandoned car, I wonder what happened there.


We came across this beautiful river while driving back to Tallahassee.


And some quirky garden ornaments.


Merry Christmas again, I hope you enjoyed our trip :)!