The Ancient City – Sailing Windara

Saint Augustine is known as the Ancient City and lays claim to being the oldest city in the United States. I absolutely loved our time here for so many reasons.

Since we arrived mid-day Saturday, Chris and I had a rare day and a half to explore together. We spent Saturday afternoon checking out the old city and visiting Castello de San Marcos National Monument. The 450+ year old is made of coquina and is the oldest masonry fort in the US. What I found most interesting was the 19th century graffiti, left by those who served there.

Saint Augustine does a big “Nights of Lights” Christmas display, and the businesses along the waterfront go especially overboard – like Clark Griswold attacked the whole block. It was fun to walk around and see all the lights and get into the Christmas spirt a little, even with the massive crowds.

Sunday we visited the Saint Augustine Lighthouse first thing, and it was nice to be there before the crowd showed up. I have a ridiculous fear of heights, and for some reason, lots of stairs (especially spiral staircases) trigger that fear. It’s 219 steps to the top of the light, and by the time I reached the top, my legs were like rubber (and not just from being out of shape). It took me a few minutes to settle down once I got up there, but the views were beautiful and totally worth it.

I love how much wildlife we’ve seen throughout the week. We took Squall for a cruise and did our own little eco tour down into Salt Run. We saw wood storks, egrets, ibises, great blues, little blues, and on our way back, dolphins and a sea turtle off the fort. Later, when we went to step off the boat, there was a green sea turtle feeding on the growth on our dock. We saw dolphins daily, and a pair even swam through our slip. A great egret often came to fish from our shore power cable, and a tricolor heron visited the piling between our slip and our neighbors’.

Every morning, we made our coffee and took our morning walk across the Bridge of Lions, over to the fort and back, and it was a pretty awesome way to start the day. I took a morning during the week to go back and walk the old town and visit the fort again when there were fewer tourists, which I really enjoyed.

Marker 8 had a daily happy hour with hors d’oeuvres, and the couple times we were able to make it, it was a nice way to meet some of the other boaters and hotel guests. We met the people on the boats around ours (although our immediate neighbors to either side weren’t around) and spent an evening at the fire pit chatting with new friends on Red Sky and two couples who were guests of the hotel. I’m not usually a social butterfly, but I enjoy those kinds of random conversations.

This was the first place we visited that was a final destination for some boaters, and I definitely felt the pressure to get south starting to ease up. Of course I want to get to the Bahamas, but now that we’re here, we’re getting into warmer temperatures (I was even able to break out shorts and tank tops again) and it wouldn’t be the end of the world if we just slowly made our way south through Florida.

Despite being almost 100 miles away, we watched a Falcon 9 rocket launch from the end of our slip. It was the first time I’ve ever seen a launch, and my maybe-not-so-inner geek was stupidly excited.

Last night, we had an amazing dinner at Llama, a Peruvian restaurant. It’s a tiny little place that you’d walk right past even if you did notice it, but it was packed and we were lucky to get a table without a reservation. To start, we had anticuchos – marinated and chargrilled beef hearts, andean corn and golden potatoes served with panca pepper-scallions aioli. I got the paiche amazonico – Amazonian arapaima seasoned and wrapped in plantain leaves cooked over hot coals, yucca, plantains, hearts of palm and a passion fruit-cilantro sauce, and Chris had tallarines verdes – Peruvian Italian creamy pesto tagliatelle pasta, topped with a soy glaze drizzle, garnished with homemade parmesan crisps, with braised pork belly. While I was completely stuffed, we couldn’t pass up dessert, which was basically an amazing chocolate mousse.

I can see why so many people make St. Augustine their final destination, and I’m already looking forward to visiting again. As with so many other places we’ve visited, I’m sad to leave but excited for the next part of the journey.