Keep off the National Monument

It always seems as though a visit from Casey is never planned. I guess she took that "our door is always open" thing pretty seriously :) Anyways, it has been far too long since Casey came to visit me last. Since she was going to be trapped in Dixie until right before New Year's, I suggested that she might rather spend her time at my house than in Dixie. Then 2 hours later, she was in my driveway.

With all this recent cold weather, we have been utilizing our fire pit quite often. So Jared, Casey and I sat around the fire and enjoyed some chili and wine.

The next day, Casey and I decided to embark on some of our usual adventures. We drove down to St. Augustine with plans to hit up our favorite spots...lunch at Crusier's, frolicking around the fort, happy hour at Pizzalley's, the Tini Martini bar, wine tasting at San Sebastian. We visit historic downtown pretty regularly and we do the same thing everytime, but it never gets old.

When we arrived in downtown St. Augustine, it was freezing and super crowded. I was surprised by the crowd because it was a Tuesday, but I seemed to have forgotten that the week after Christmas is the week that everyone comes on vacation to Florida. The people who work at the stores and restuarants in St. Augustine call this week after Christmas "hell week" because they are so busy.

Our first stop was at Cruiser's for lunch, yum. Casey insists that everytime she comes to visit me we eat at Crusier's, which I don't mind because it is delicious and the one in St. Augustine gives a 20% discount to people who live in St. Augustine. After lunch, it is time to begin our frolicking. We start at the fort, or as it is properly called the Castillo de San Marcos.

We wander around the outside of the fort while all the tourists stand in the huge line to buy tickets to go inside the fort. We laugh as we watch the tourists pay money to go inside and see nothing. The fort looks exactly the same on the inside as it does on the outside, just a bunch of coquina walls and that's it. The only highlight to going inside the fort is that you can go up to the roof of the fort and see out over all of downtown St. Augustine. However, if all you are looking for is the cool view, you can walk to the top of the Bridge of Lions and get the same view for free :)

As we make our lap around the outside of the fort, we just can't help but indulge in our usual nonsense. Casey and I are notorious for climbing on the monuments, just because they put a sign there that says "keep off". If they didn't put a sign there telling us not to do it, then we would probably have no interest in doing it. I have learned from being a teacher that when you tell a kid, "this is a rule, don't do it", you might as well be saying "I dare you to break this rule". Its like a challenge to them, and some things never change. So we climb on parts of the fort and the tourists gawk in horror. I always want to go up to them and inform them that this fort is over 400 years old and has remained standing through dozens of hurricanes, but you're right, my 130 pound body is going to make the whole thing crumble to the ground.

After leaving the fort, we venture into the new Pirate Museum just to see what it is like. We play in the gift shop and since you have to pay to go into the actual exhibit, we skip that and move on to our next adventure. We wander around St. George Street and on campus at Flagler College as we make our way to the San Sebastian winery.

We hop on the next tour at the winery, which I could probably give myself. You can't just walk in and do a tasting, they want you to go on the tour as well. So in order to get to the tasting, I had to endure the tour for like the 20th time. When we finally get to the tasting, it is delightful as always and we get to sample the usual muscadine wines. The winery was packed, so we enjoy our free tasting and got out of there asap. After leaving the winery, we continue to wander around downtown but we decide to wander down some of the more residential streets that we don't usually visit. 

As we are walking, we pass some shops and cute inns, but then we come to this large building that kind of looks like a dorm or a hotel that I've never seen before. We notice that one of the doors goes to a museum that is dedicated to a priest and another door that says "Sisters of St. Joseph Residence". Casey and I, being ignorant to anything that isn't Methodist, start to get excited because we think that this has something to do with nuns. I suppose that when you are Catholic, nuns are really nothing too exciting, but when you're aren't Catholic, they are interesting. Sure enough, when we make our way around the building on one of the side streets, we see a nun. Then we stop because we see three more come out into the street behind this building. Why we feel the need to hide from the nuns, I have no idea. We were just walking down the street. Finally, we come to the front of the building and the gate is open.

I walk Casey up to front door and try to leave her there, but the nuns won't take her. She must be too far beyond saving. I'm just kidding, but I did make Casey take a picture on the front steps of her new home :)

At this point on our journey, we decide that is it time for happy hour. We go to our usual place, Pizzalley's on St. George Street. They have a really good happy hour special, 2 for 1 drinks and you get a free slice of pizza when you order a 2 for 1 drink. They also have the best breadsticks ever. We get a table outside and I have never seen it so packed. We get our drinks and our waiter informs us that during "hell week" they still do 2 for 1 drinks, but you don't get the free slice of pizza because it is so busy, boo. So we enjoy a round of drinks and some breadsticks and I decide that I am in the mood for a fruity martini. And when you are in the mood for a martini in St. Augustine, there is only one place to go...  

We get a table outside at the Tini Martini Bar because the Christmas lights are so pretty, the sun is setting and they have outside heaters. Casey gets a pomegranate martini and I get the famous kiss on the lips martini which is strawberry vodka, peach schnapps, cranberry juice, orange juice, and pineapple juice; its delicious. We enjoy one martini each because they are rather pricey and since it is already dark, we decide that we want to go look at Chrismtas lights.

During the month of December, the trolley company in St. Augustine runs a Christmas lights trolley at night for pretty cheap, so we decide to bundle up and take a ride. When we get on the trolley, they give us these ridiculous looking glasses to look at the lights with.

This is what the lights look like through these glasses...

Some of the tourists wore their glasses on the entire trolley ride. I have no idea how they did it. I wore the glasses for two minutes and I felt like I was going to vomit. Plus, you can't even really see the Christmas lights, all you see is a moving kaleidoscope of color.

The trolley took us all around downtown and played Christmas music as we rode. It was absolutely freezing, but we enjoyed the lights and the trolley. It was a wonderful ending to our day in St. Augustine.