Thursday 31 October 2013

St Augustine

I haven't done a picture post in a while.

The family and I recently visited St Augustine, the oldest city in America. St Augustine was founded in 1565 by the Spanish navy and subsequently served as the capital of Spanish Florida for 200 years. It repeatedly switched between Spanish and British hands until the Spanish, broke, sold Florida to the Americans in 1819. Yay history!

 The St Augustine lighthouse was built in 1874. This is the second St Augustine lighthouse; the first fell into the sea.

 
 The view up to the top of the lighthouse. There are about 170 steps to the top; this is about half the number of steps as Hampstead tube station which, at 190 feet below ground level, is the deepest tube station in London. Yay for random, useless facts! The next time you go to a pub quiz there will blatantly be a question about the deepest tube station - you're welcome.

  The view from the top - it was pretty stormy


 Me in the Castillo de San Marcos, the oldest masonry fort in the continental US. There were jaunty people in dubiously period costumes, leading me to the conclusion that all historical sites should have jaunty costumed folk.

 I bloody love a good canon... 


Petrified wood at the Lightner Museum. 

The Lightner Museum is one of the oddest museums I have ever been to. The building was beautiful but the rooms were just crowded with the oddest assortments of things. There was one room devoted to some guy's toaster collection. In fact the whole museum, with its large rooms of random items, reminded me of this creepy scene at the end of Return to Oz (which, to be honest, is pretty creepy from start to finish).

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