St Augustine … Tuesday 27th November 2012
We spent the day visiting some of the sights in St Augustine. In particular the Memorial Presbyterian church was was quite impressive and the docent and minister that we spoke to couldn't have been more welcoming. We also took a student guided tour around Flagler College. The central building on campus started life as the Hotel Ponce de Leon, built in ~ 1880 by Henry Flagler as a top quality resort hotel for the wealthy. Flagler made his money from the Standard OIl company that he founded with John Rockerfeller, and then went on to establish a number of these fine hotels and the railroad transport system to support them, including the railroad to Key West. in the mid 1960s the hotel was closed and the estate created a small private liberal arts college in the grounds. It's interesting because the buildings still have the interior decor of the hotel, including the worlds largest in-use collection of Tiffany glass. This evening was great fun - our friends Lynn and Lee, that we first met up at River Dunes (NC) during the hurricane, came round for dinner and drinks. They had spent the last couple of days bring their boat Serendipity down from Fernandina Beach.
Tomorrow, if all goes well, we will make an early start and go off the coast to cover the 54 nautical miles down to the next inlet at Ponce de Leon. We are currently moored in St Augustine just south of the Bridge of Lions, which is low vertical clearance bridge that opens on the hour and half hour from 7am to 6pm. We need to go back through this bridge to access the St Augustine inlet and the Atlantic ocean. We spent an hour this morning on and off the VHF radio with the marina trying to switch to a mooring north of the bridge so that we can get going before the bridge opens. This turned out not to be possible, but in the end irrelevant because we subsequently found out the bridge will open on demand before 7am … not very well publicized.
Mike
Memorial Presbyterian Church
Ceiling in Memorial Presbyterian Church
A small lizard in the grounds
The rotunda - Flagler College (formerly Ponce de Leon Hotel)
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