St. Augustine - Day I

Hi fanbase.

Every year, the Houghs take a vacation. This year, we selected the historic city of St. Augustine - America's oldest city, founded by the Spanish in 1565 - as our destination.

Enjoy the pictures and video, folks...

We arrived in St. Augustine about an hour before check-in time, which didn't give us a whole lot of time to check out any of the major attractions, so we opted to walk around the surrounding historical district and kill some time. As you can see, it was extremely humid out.

The historic district of St. Augustine was founded by Melendez, a conquistador, in 1565. Most of the buildings, whether they be gift shops, museums, restaurants, or hotels, are hundreds of years old.

Our hotel, the Pirate Haus, was in the center of historic St. Augustine... so we were within walking distance to pretty much everything.

The Pirate Haus. A pirate-themed, kid-oriented bed and breakfast.

This staircase scared the bejesus out of me.

Our room in the Pirate Haus was the legendary Jungle Room (Room 6).

This room, apparently, is famous for being haunted. We did not know this prior to reserving the room.

The view from our room (pretty sure that old-ish looking building is a Spanish munitions house).

Bunk beds!

Pretzels and Pixar for lunch.

Parking was cramped, but we didn't use the van all week, so it didn't bother us (except for when we had to get the stroller out of the trunk in the morning)

Royal Spanish seal on the old Treasury.

Yeargh!

St. George Street - the souvenir center of historic St. Augustine, where we spent the majority of our time when not hitting up attractions.

St. Augustine changed hands numerous times between the Spanish and British before eventually becoming part of the United States in the early 19th century, hence all the different flags everywhere.

In St. Augustine, Elvis is willing to predict your future.

Trust me. If you're a fan of Flight of the Conchords, than you know why this is funny.

The Old City Gates (feat. fat and elderly tourists on a trolley)

The old Methodist church.

The old Catholic church (they're big on churches in St. Augustine).

The Fam in front of a statue of some guy who went to church a lot.

The cathedral of St. somebody-or-other

Another cathedral shot

Cannonballs
A 'Cannon' in the historic market plaza - the place to buy one's chickens, rum, and African slaves back in the day.

The old government building (governors' headquarters throughout the 16 and 17th century)

More of St. George Street, down by the old Market Plaza. By the late afternoon, we had decided to forgo seeing any major attractions (like the Pirate Museum, on account of my own stupidity), and stick to checking out the shops and old buildings throughout the historic district.

Yours Truly, once again pushing our 300lb double stroller (that's the old governor's headquarters in the background, across the street)

The Mill Top Tavern

The Oldest Schoolhouse in the Western Hemisphere (and someone else's kids!)

The St. Augustine trolley: favorite mode of transport for senior citizens and fat people.

Some old building that now gives out awesome, free wine samples. Booya!

Down St. George Street... again.

The Mill Top Tavern

At the Chianti Room Restaurante for Happy Hour/dinner. For a medium cheese pizza, free large pizza slice, two milks, and two pints of Shock Top (one of my favorite wheat ales), our bill came out to a mere $21!

Looking into replacing our Pirate Museum tickets at one of the City Visitor booths (I misplaced our originals, so we couldn't go that afternoon... turned up buried in a pile of souvenir receipts on our bed back at the Pirate Haus)

Alayna showing off some of her new souvenir necklaces

And so ends Day One of the Hough's Tour de Force through St. Augustine. Stay tuned for tomorrow's installment.

- Brian