Saint Augustine, Day 2

The ending of Daylight Saving Time has us kind of screwed up. We were in bed and asleep Sunday night by 9:30 (our bodies thought it was 10:30), and up early on Monday. After writing yesterday's blog entry, I set about looking for "things to do in Saint Augustine" on Google. We were out and cruising by 9:30. We decided to first visit the St. Augustine Pirate & Treasure Museum across from the Castillo de San Marcos.

Parking is the only downside to Saint Augustine. There's very little room for public parking lots, the street parking is always full, and as far as I can tell there's only one parking garage, and it's not convenient unless you want to walk a lot. As it turned out, the parking in front of the Castillo de San Marcos worked out fine. In 2007 there were parking meters that you had to feed quarters into, and I was prepared for that. Now, though, they have the kiosks where you can pay for up to four hours at a time, at $1.50 per hour (Visa and Mastercard accepted). You get a ticket that you put on the dash. Much more convenient.

You enter the museum through the gift shop (of course). You're not allowed to use flash inside the museum, so many of the pictures we took are a little blurry or dark. But it's an interesting hour of walking through various rooms and looking at the replicas and actual artifact from 400 years ago.

The flag is supposed to be one of only three actual pirate flags still in existence. Linda pointed out that the stitching looked way too even to be done by hand. I'm pretty sure they had sewing machines back in the 1800's, but it looked pretty even to me. Even so, we had a good time, and bought a couple of souvenir shot glasses for our collection.

From there we went to the Whetstone Chocolate Factory on King Street for their tour. You buy the tour tickets in the store, and the tour begins there.

 

After a fifteen minute introduction, where our guide explained how cacao is harvested, and the process to convert it into chocolate, we walked across the lot to the factory to see the equipment that makes the chocolate candies we all love so much.

 

 

We got the chance to walk through the actual production area (hair nets required) and he even ran the wrapper machine (even making reference to the I Love Lucy episode, saying this would have made her job easier), and there were plenty of samples, from a sweet milk chocolate (31% cacao) to a nice dark chocolate (71% cacao). I learned that 35% cacao is the dividing line between milk and dark chocolates.We even got a piece of while chocolate (0% cacao). Since there isn't any cacao in it, why is it called chocolate? Because it has cocoa butter in it.

 

We didn't buy any chocolate from the store at this time. Instead, we opted to go down King Street to the San Sebastian Winery tour.

 

 

We toured here back in 2007, but who can resist the wine tasting? We saw a video of the vineyards and harvesting process before Doc took us around the site. While most of the wines are fermented in large stainless steel tanks, one of them, the Castillo Red, was being fermented in American Oak barrels, purchased from Jack Daniels.

 

Last time, they had tasting stations along the tour. This time, we gathered around a big table in the store, and got to taste about 8 different varieties, from dry whites through sherry and port (way too sweet). Our guide Doc was great, and gave us extra when we asked. We ended up buy six bottles.

 

We'd had enough touring, so we returned to Whetstone and bought some milk and dark chocolates before heading back to the hotel. After dropping of our stuff we asked our desk clerk Robert to recommend a local place to eat. He suggested Beachcombers.

 

 

I don't think Beachcombers has changed since the 60's, and it was just what we were looking for. Linda had the flounder sandwich, I had a great cheeseburger, and we shared a basket of onion rings, all of them delicious. At 3 o'clock we headed back to the hotel for a much-needed nap.

For dinner, I looked for a local micro-brewery, and found the A1A Ale Works, right across from the Bridge of Lions.

We had appetizers for dinner, along with their home brews. Linda had their King Street Light Lager, while I opted for the Bridges of Lions Brown Ale. I sampled the Strange Stout (named after Alexander Strange, the founder's grandfather), and it was pretty good, but a little more than I wanted. Good people, good beer. Our kind of place!

Back to the hotel and asleep by 10:30.

Today we're heading to Kennedy Space Center. I'm hoping to get lots of pictures.