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!

A Town in Decay: Kula

Kula is a town with 47.000 inhabitants. And the town is full with old buildings in various stages of decay.

I loved the many primitive door locks and doors.

There were still old type of shops like copper and iron smiths, truly a town stuck in time (except for the mobile phones and satellite dishes :)).

We were there on a Sunday so many shops were closed.

I love the texture that only time can give.

These are blankets. Made with cotton inside and then stitched by hand in intricate motives, again a craftsmanship not much done these days.

A lot of these houses are still lived in, you usually only tell because of the clean windows and curtains. The houses are protected and can not be demolished, however many of the owners can not afford restoration either. Selling the houses are also not much of an option as the would not bring more than 10.000$, which is not enough to buy a new house. So many were inhabited by old couples of which the children went to bigger cities.

My guess is that in about 20 years they'll all be empty, some were already, like this one where I could take a peek inside and discover its beautiful mantle piece.

My favorite were all the rustic doors, some were unfortunately replaced by modern metal ones.

Although this house below looks like it is skeletonized it was still occupied. These houses were plastered with a mixture of mud and  straw which was a great isolation against both heat and cold but once this coating falls off you can see the wood work under it.

I still have many more pictures to share so stay tuned :)