15 April 2015

Day two in St. Augustine. We did some boat chores and then headed up to do a package mailing. There was a pretty good breeze so it was nice walking.

We walked along Treasury Street, named since it was the route from the Spanish Treasury to the waterfront. It’s the narrowest street in the USA, it’s wide enough for two men and a money chest. That keeps someone in a carriage from coming by and taking it from you. (I’m thinking if the horse ran them over you could still steal the money, but not sure how it was done in the 1600′s.)

Aviles Street is the oldest street, but it’s also narrow, we saw one of the Red Trolly carts hung up on the wall. Glad we are on foot, since it looks like driving here is kind of a hazard.

We spent time in the Lightner Musuem. It started off as the Hotel Alcazar, one of Henry Flagler’s uber-fancy hotels. It had an indoor pool, sauna, etc for all the guests. It was converted to the offices for the City of Ft. Lauderdale in 1973, they took over the guest rooms. The ballroom, pool, sauna, etc. Was converted into the Lightner Museum. They filled in the pool to put a restaurant there, so sad.

Lots of artifacts from the age when it was one of Flaglers places. Lots of cut and hand blown glass,great chairs, tables, etc. One of the scientific glass blowers of the day made a steam engine out of glass. It doesn’t move today, but I can just imagine what it was like.

It was neat to see the vast marble benches of the sauna and the picture of people swimming in the indoor pool. If you had money in the late 1800′s it looked like it was a great place to go.

Speaking of money, walking down King and some of the other streets is a shoppers paradise. If you couldn’t afford items from Worth Street in Palm Beach, you can shop here instead. That tennis bracelet you coveted from Tiffany’s for $10K is only $7K here. I was impressed with the number of jewelry and art places.

Lunch was at Gaufres & Good, we had polish food and it was very good.

A few more shops (one was an antique map shop) and a few more museums we were done for the afternoon. Susan came back and napped and I worked on the blog again.

One of the things that I have been unwilling to do is update software on the trip. Lots of stuff I depend on and I really don’t have the time to dork with things that are broken. So I’m behind on versions of WordPress (the blog software), IOS for the iPad, etc. I had a problem with the Gallery Software a few weeks ago and I had upgraded the version. Well it turns out that it managed to break the commenting option. I sort of wondered how my spam went from a few hundred a day to zero, but I wasn’t going to look too hard. Today was dig into the innards of WordPress and figure it out.

I was able to make that happen, so you can now comment away!

Dinner was back at JP Henley’s. New Belgium Brewery was holding a tap night, they had 4 of their beers on tap. So we had three of them and pub grub (an assortment of sausages and cheese along with a Ruben sandwich). It was fun and we picked up some beer swag for Dave.

After dinner we walked down to Harry’s. We had missed out on the Oreo Beignets last night, but not tonight. There were six Oreo cookies dipped in batter and then deep fried. The process makes the cookie soft and melts the filling into creamy goodness. It was well worth coming back for. I also had the key lime pie. It was store bought, but it was pretty good once it warmed up some. (It was served in that just before frozen state. If you want it, order it first so it thaws as you eat your dinner.)

Back on the dock I saw that the crew of the “Boundless” was aboard their boat. It’s a 36′ Seaton, one of 5 built in 2005. I was invited aboard and got the quick tour. Galley and salon are at the same level. Three steps up and you are in the pilot house with great visibility. Three steps down forward you are in a huge main cabin with a master head that runs the width of the boat (It’s under the pilot house, lots of headroom) Tons of cherry wood gives it a very warm look. Flybridge access from either side door up three stairs. The side doors are “dutch doors” so you can have the sea breeze but keep the lower door closed for the waves. Very nice boat, but with only 5 in the world, one isn’t coming my way soon.

At the end of the dock was an American Cruise Line boat. They run from Maine to Florida. They are spending the night here so people can visit the town then they will head north. I expect to see them on our trip as we move up the coast.

Turned our keys in tonight and the dockmaster showed me the new packets they will start handing out. It turns out that there is a cruisers shuttle that runs between all the marine and hardware stores in the morning and the two grocery stores in the afternoon. An all day pass is $5 so it would be worth it. It wouldn’t have helped me, since it was down today for maintenance. But I now get the $20 mooring, water taxi, pump-out, and a $5 shuttle along with hot showers. Staying on the mooring ball wouldn’t be a bad deal.

We had heavy rain this afternoon and expect more tonigh. On the plus side the extra gasket material is working pretty well.