Last Vacation post, St. Augustine

Happy New Year everyone! Already 12 days have passed, time flies. We have already been back home for a week but Jet lag and both catching the flu (most likely on our flight back) took a while to become human again.
We spent our last week in Florida in St. Augustine, we were there for a few hours last year while driving through.

St. Augustine was the exact opposite of Tallahassee, it is right at the coast and due to its history very touristic. The house we stayed in was a 5-minute walk from the beach.

There was this beautiful sculpture garden, free to visit, donated by a local sculptor, Thomas Glover, who passed away a while ago, here is the story behind the park.

8 sculptures were made by Glover, and 8 more were from other artists.

We were staying in a house taking care of 2 Scottish terriers and a parrot. After weeks of missing our own dogs, the dogs we took care of in Tallahassee and St. Augustine were wonderful.
We arranged these sits through TrustedHouseSitters where we also get our own sitters when we travel, no money gets exchanged (besides of a yearly fee at the site itself which ensures a safe environment), it is a great site. If you want to become a member use this code for 25% off RAF112470.

We saved quite some hotel costs this way and we could travel in a calmer way instead of changing hotels every 1-2 days. We had a few rainy days but it was not cold and it was great to wind down before our long trip back.

We didn't do a lot of shopping here as our stuff could barely fit in our car when we arrived :)

We visited the historic part on a sunny day, I did not take that many photos due to last years visit.

Traffic is crowded so we parked a little further away and walked, parking in town can easily cost 20$, we found a free spot :)

The town gets also lots of visitors due to the fireworks during New Year, but it was a bit chilly and we rather stayed with the scared dogs than go outside.

The town gives a bit of a staged feeling, it doesn't feel like the usual American towns, but is worth a visit when in the neighborhood, 1-2 days is plenty. We mostly went to the beach as the dogs loved that as well.

Like last year we had the extra atmosphere due to the Christmas decorations.

We did not go to the lighthouse this year, it has a cool black and white swirl design.

Some people had the beach as their back yard!

These people know how to enjoy life :)

We came back with 9 large suitcases and 4 pieces of hand luggage, it was crazy! Some stuff for the new house, and materials for the shop, all thrifted, of course!

St Augustine and Jacksonville

After staying to nights in Daytona Beach we went up to St. Augustine.

The oldest continuously occupied European settlement in the US, St Augustine was founded by the Spanish in 1565.

Today it is a major tourist destination but luckily as we are traveling at such a strange time of the year the crowd was fine even though it was Saturday it was pleasant. I can not imagine in Summer though, as even now we had to pay 10$ parking for a pretty far spot.

Lots and lots of churches.

Everything was well kept and picture perfect.

We just spent a few hours to walk through town.

We loved the less visited back streets.

And the cute Christmas decorations.

Some houses were open for the public, you can do a tour of those which we avoided as the houses were full.

We preferred the outdoor details.

Some houses seemed like fairytale houses.

Florida is very green and flat, a very different landscape than California.

And this town is right at the coast and a lot of these houses are looking to the water so have great views as well.

Here and there you could see some storm damage.

I loved this determined lady, she really wanted to read that book.

Some houses were hidden between greenery.

 After spending a few hours here we went to Jacksonville, as you can see we already made quite the distance in a few days from Miami. We stayed 2 nights at Jacksonville as most things would be closed and we had a comfortable hotel, not to mention that Mum got the Flu which I now have too.
Jacksonville was just a city but had some great thrift stores :)

We're already much further ahead, I'm behind in blogging but from tomorrow on we will be in New Orleans for 2 weeks so I'll catch up there with the destinations we traveled.