Thursday in St Augustine

After eating a mediocre hotel breakfast we drove out to get gas and see what's available that is not unbearably hot. The Lightner Museum was nearby and had it's own parking lot - perfect! We had to wait a few minutes for it to open but we gainfully spent the time admiring its amazing courtyard! 

I expected a paining and /or sculpture museum but this was so much more! The original building was created as a hotel for rich folks. Even the functional parts of the building were created with grace and beauty in mind. 

Then in 1947 it was purchased by Chicago publisher Otto Lightner who converted it into a "hobbies museum". And what hobbies he had!  Each room in the 3 storied building held different collections. One of the largest was furniture, like this 1870 Louis XV Style bureau, decorated with gilt-bronze statues and flanked by winged candelabra. Perfectly in line for a group of rich people who saw themselves as America's new aristocracy.

Also perfect for the age of excess is this child's cradle. I admit, I love the lines of this.

 

And the blown French urn was placed to catch the sunlight perfectly.

One of my favorite sections is the miscellaneous items and random collections that Lightner gathered. It includes an Egyptian mummy with burial mask, and a "decorative" wall hanging made from untold number of cigar bands.

A small collection of old typewriters included this 1896 Lambert typewriter. I don't quite understand it but it seemed to work fine for them.

This is a true oddity: the Morton-Wimshurst-Holtz Influence Machine "used for Therapeutical and X-Ray Purposes".

The guide had told us the miscellaneous collection included a door. He didn't say was a door with gorgeous glass panels!

The music room included a record player shaped like a mini-grand piano - very nice!

And the Violano-Virtuoso (1927), an electric violin with each string played by a circular bow that was powered by a small motor. 

Another small room held a beautiful collection of stained glass panes. Some things are beautiful for the sake of beauty.

One room contained a series of bicycles through the years. The Pony Star (1886) put the large wheel in back, which was supposed to be more stable and therefore safer.

Lightner kept a couple of the original hotel features, including the sulfer baths and steam room. 

And he kept the indoor swimming pool. Yep, at the time this was the world's largest indoor swimming pool. And apparently the rich folks didn't actually swim in it. Instead they sat in luxurious alcoves around it and watched water acrobats entertain them. 

Even back them the pool was often drained and used for other purposes, such as parties. Nowadays it's only used for scheduled events so we could only admire it from the balconies. While we were there one couple were having a wedding rehearsal, complete with mitered bishop. 

This was a perfect way to spend the morning. Afterwards we went back to our own hotel for a quick nap, then met with Janice, Lance and granddaughter Hannah at their time-share condo. Janice treated us to some really excellent key lime she bought. Besides getting the "key lime" part right (not just coloring it green like so many do), it also had a crust with nuts and graham crackers, and the whipped cream around the edge was actually boiled frosting!

With dessert out of the way, we went to Crabby's for lunch. Randy and I weren't hungry after that pie so we split a nice grouper sandwich and fries. We all visited awhile before parting ways, they to their condo and us to our hotel.  

Later after we had freshened up we went out for dinner. We cut the search for a parking space short by parking in front of the fort. You pay for all parking here but finding it is the tricky part. 

We knew where to go for dinner - Columbia restaurant. Randy remembered how good their Mohitos were so he started with that. They mixed at table with in a surprisingly large pitcher, with sugar, mint leaves, half a dozen limes, rum, and sparkling water. And served it with sugar cane stirrer. We shared a 1905 salad and some of their famous bread, then Randy ordered Paella and I had the shrimp and crab meat appetizer. Definitely worth the trip!

 

7/25:  It was an excellent get-away, only slightly diminished by the fact that our rental car did not start the next day and it took almost 4 hours for Enterprise to get us another one.  

07/23 Time to visit St. Augustine

Since our truck needs a little work, we rented a car for our trip to St Augustine and dropped the truck off. It took awhile for me to get used to driving a car again but the GPS took us on a route that wasn’t very busy, so it worked out OK.

We celebrated the 2-hour drive to get there with a 2-hour nap, followed by a late lunch at Osteen’s. We shared a 1 1/2 breaded shrimp meal with fruit salad and fries - excellent as usual!

We had driven over over a bridge to get to Osteen’s and on both sides were some familiar-looking lion statues. I really wanted a good look at those so after lunch when we went back across the bridge we found a place to park (finally) and walked over to them. And they look just like my favorite Italian lion statues!  They are literally copies of the "Medici lions" in Florence (one of which dates back to 2nd century!) Made me so happy to find these here, I first saw them in 1999 and have loved them ever since!

Since we already had a parking spot, we went walking around. Nearby is the cathedral of St Augustine, which serves the oldest parish in the US. Very beautiful and respectfully quiet inside.
 
It was still afternoon so we walked towards George Street, home of a wide variety of shops. They all try to be historic in nature, and one of the be newer one is downright prehistoric - in fact, that's the name of the store! Inside were unusual beauties, like a very good replica of a T Rex skull and what I believe is a real mammoth tusk - so jealous, I would love to have either of these!

A lot of the buildings here are old enough that they are build on coquina. It's a sedimentary rock made almost entirely of shell pieces and sand, cemented together by the calcium in the shells. It looks very porous but it seems to last a very long time. 

It really was too hot and humid to be walking around. We tried to counter that by getting some delicious ice cream at Tedi's. 

At the end of George Street are the old cities gates. They are also built out of coquina and were almost torn down in 1900 as an eyesore, until the DAR raised interest in saving them. So glad they did, they are wonderful. 

And just beyond the gates is the Huguenot cemetery. Catholics were buried in the city but eventually they had enough non-Catholics living and dying here that they needed a place to put them. Not in the city (of course) but just outside. I really love old tombstones with old fashioned engravings.  

In spite of the name, there aren’t any Huguenots there, just regular Protestants. Tourists are not allowed inside, which I regretted but totally understood. 

By then it was definitely time to quit. The trip back to the car  was more of a trudge than a walk; we had already seen the area and we didn’t even have ice cream. It was just so hot! I dropped Randy at the hotel then went to Walmart for soda because we are gonna need something cold to drink tomorrow.