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 :)!

Crystal River, Tallahassee and Thomasville

At my last blog post, we were leaving Clearwater and were about to go to Crystal River. Famous for its amount of visiting manatees. They are protected and although you swim closeby with them you may not touch them and they are completely free and in their natural habitat, not an aquarium exploiting animals.

However, as it had rained the night before the water was muddy so we did not go to them as we wouldn't have seen much.
The entire town clearly financially benefits of these friendly giants as there are a bunch of tours and such. The Manatees can mostly be seen at specific (protected) parts and you have to pay to get there (either a boat trip or a National park). The Manatees go there mostly during the Winter months for warmer water.

Although no Manatees this time, we enjoyed our 1-day stay, the huge oaks with Spanish moss is always a favorite.

Since Monday we have been staying in Tallahassee, capital of Florida. We are house and pet sitting two sweet dogs through Trusted Housesitters which is the same site we use to find sitters for our own doggies while we travel.

We'll be here till the 26th and start a new housesit in St. Augustine the same day. But meanwhile, we have enjoyed this lovely city and have been mostly thrifting. Today however we went to Thomasville which is in Georgia, a state we had not visited last year.

A small historic town, the main street had some cute old buildings, now mostly touristic (cafe's, gift shops, boutiques and such).

We wanted to go there before Christmas as it might get crowded during the Holidays.

It was a nice day trip and even the 40-minute drive to the town was relaxing as the entire road was surrounded by trees.

We also went to a few thrift shops, of course.

It was a cute very American town and a lovely afternoon.

This shop, Relics, was very cool. Pretty expensive but a very inspiring shop.

Lots of rusty repurposed tools and such.

The shop was huge and full with lots of oddities, it was a quiet day so we were the only ones in there so we could admire all the pretty things.

Most thrift shops we go to are not very photographic, like Goodwill and Salvation Army, they both are chain shops for charity (all items offered for sale are donated) and have great stuff, but they do not have the fancy ambiance :) As we will be in Tallahassee for one more week I will blog about this lovely city too, next time.