St. Augustine, FL

This morning we fueled up at Fernandina Beach for $3.64 per gallon.  This is the credit card price and would have been $.13 per gallon cheaper for cash.  We had also called Cape Canaveral fuel dock which is notoriously cheaper than most other Florida fuel docks and they wanted $3.91 per gallon.  When we arrived here in St. Augustine the price was $4.30.  We saved quite a bit by checking around. 
Today we went back out to sea.  It was a Power Boat kind of day because there were no winds but the swell was back.  It was pretty foggy when we left St. Mary’s GA this morning.  I thought this bunch of trees was a huge fog bank but as we closed in on them it was more obvious that the fog had landed in the trees.  Watching the shrimpers do their thing out at sea is spell binding.  We also got to hear and see some Navy War Ships practicing maneuvers. 

We came into the St. Augustine Inlet and made it to the Bridge of Lions for its 4:30 opening.  Otherwise it doesn’t open again until 5:30pm so that rush hour traffic doesn’t have to be stopped on the bridge.  We passed by St. Augustine Lighthouse and Castillo de San Marcos.  We are now docked at Rivers Edge Marina for the night.  St. Augustine is America’s oldest city, founded by the Spanish in 1565.


We decided to do a quick tour of St. Augustine so we walked into town.  The bridge was flooded due to extremely high tides recently and high North winds. 

Short on time we decided to tour Flagler College which offers tours at 10am and 2pm.  The building and grounds were once the Ponce De Leon Hotel built by Henry Flagler (New York millionaire and co-founder of Standard Oil) in a Spanish Renaissance architecture for the elite.  He had come to St. Augustine in 1878 per his wife’s doctors orders to help her tuberculosis.  However, once he arrived he loved the climate but found the accommodations were not up to par for his social status.  His wife soon died and he remarried her nurse.  They returned to St. Augustine to build an upscale winter retreat and create a town with many social activities available.  The Hotel only took 18 months to build and was finished by 1887.  This is a Hotel Postcard from 1909.  Many famous people stayed here including Mark Twain, Theodore Roosevelt, and Babe Ruth.  Thomas Edison personally assisted in making it the first building in Florida with wired electricity.

In 1968 the building and grounds were turned into Flagler College.  It has been renovated although they kept a lot of its originality.  Today it costs about $23,000 per year for tuition and room and board. 

Check out the dining hall.  It has the most Tiffany stained glass windows still in use of anywhere in the world.  I could just sit back and stare at the murals for hours.  My dining hall looked nothing like this

We also saw the Grand Parlor where the ladies hung out while their husbands conducted business.  Today it still has a magnificent art collection and the Austrian Crystal Tiffany Chandeliers.
What a great tour…recommended!
Got back to Jay Sea Dee by 1:30 and headed back to the ICW.