3-28, 4-2 St. Augustine

St. Augustine…. So much to do

We are out of our funk with many menial tasks taken care of and working our way north. St Augustine was an amazing stop. It was founded in 1565 by the spanish and is the oldest continuously occupied settlement of European origin in the United States. There is so much history here. One of our first encounters on land was an archaeological dig going on inside and outside a building. It is the oldest Catholic church ruins, I believe the the US. They are finding human remains and the usual, pieces of dishes etc.

St Augustine has so much history that they employ a town archeologist. Here are the dig sites.

We found the First Episcopal Church here and an amazing Catholic Cathedral. I am posting the photo of the plaque with it’s history. Interesting read.

The outside of the Cathedral Of St Augustine.

This is an interesting read. Enjoy a little piece of History.

This Cathedral has been meticulously restored. Look at the paintings in the choir loft.

The beautify alter display is mostly made of Marble and Gold. It was stunning.

The once Ponce De Leon Hotel is now Flagler College. Because it is an active college we were only allowed to view the entry way. With all of it’s magnificence, we can only imagine the rest of the building. One of the locals at the Visitor Center told us that this was a very fancy hotel intended for the extremely wealthy. He said back in the early 1900s a room was $100 a night and they required a six month stay in the winter. Wowsa.

This is the ceiling of the Grand Entrance.

These lion light fixtures with lightbulbs in their mouth were all around the grand entrance..Fun fact. Thomas Edison did the Electrical for this Hotel.

There are four of these intricately carved posts supporting the grand entrance. Wow

The entrance door has so much style and class. Love it.

The man who built this hotel also built a hotel across the street for the next class down. During hard times that hotel went out of business and just sat for year. It was pretty grand as well with a huge indoor pool. A Mr. Lightner regularly stayed at The Ponce De Leon Hotel. He was a collector of other people’s collections which he kept in Chicago. One day he looked across the street and decided to buy the hotel. He moved his collection of collections to the hotel. It is now a museum with so many interesting and vast collections it is hard to fathom. It fills the hotel. There was rooms of glass, potter, furniture, paintings, tapestries and more. I will only post a few oddities that made me go hmm.

Really… a real shrunken head. Where does one find one of these?

This was beautiful, but no place on the boat for it.

This picture disturbed me at first. I thought “why would someone paint this? It is just too weird” Then I read the story behind it and it all made sense. Read the story posted in the next picture.

Enjoy this saying on this early 20th century hooked rug. We got a good chuckle out of it.

This hotel not only had a large pool, but it had a very big steam room.

It happened again! I met up with another classmate, Tom Satran, from highschool who I haven’t seen since graduation. He and his sister drove over from the other side of the state. We had a great BBQ lunch together and caught up on each other’s lives. How fun. That makes 3 classmates, I have caught up with in Florida.