We left home at 4:30 in the afternoon for our 6:40 pm Allegient Air flight out of Huntington Tri-State Airport headed
for Sanford Airport near
Orlando, Florida. We ran into a number
of people we knew at the airport including Sarah’s friend, Lauren who is living
in the Parkersburg area. As we were
preparing to board for our flight, we saw Natalie and Wendy who arrived from
Salt Lake City after attending an EL training there.
Our 95 minute flight was uneventful and was well worth the
$50 cost of the airfare from Huntington.
We arrived at Sanford around 8:30 and picked up our bags and the Nissan
Sentra rental car from Enterprise. Since Mary had packed ham sandwiches for the
flight, we were not hungry when we arrived in Florida. The drive from Sanford to our Super
8 in Daytona Beach took about an hour and there was very little
traffic. Our room is nothing fancy but
is adequate for our needs and includes a small refrigerator and a
microwave. Our room also has a small
balcony that overlooks the ocean.
We woke up early on Monday morning and had a cup for tea
before heading north toward St.
Augustine. We made a quick stop at Pubix for some bottled water for the
trip. We arrived at St. Augustine around
9:30 am and found a ticket booth for Old Town Trolley. We purchased three day passes that include admission
to several museums and the Alligator
Farm. We took the trolley around the
town and enjoyed our driver’s interesting comments on the history of the
area. After the trolley ride, we walked
across the street to Castillo de
San Marcos which is the oldest masonry fort in the continental US.
We were impressed with the construction of
the walls from a stone called coquina
which is like a concrete made of tiny shells.
We came back into town and had lunch at La
Herencia Cafe which is a local Cuban restaurant. Both of us had the Cuban sandwich which is
roasted pork, ham, Swiss cheese, pickles and mustard on Cuban style bread. We had black beans and rice on the side. We both enjoyed our lunch. The weather was mostly sunny but had some
periods of cloudiness. However, the
temperature was nearly 80 degrees which felt pretty good to us compared to the
temperatures we left behind at home.
After lunch, we got back on the trolley and rode over to the
area near Flagler College and many of the
historic locations in the city. When a
light rain started, we decided to do some indoor sightseeing so we got back on
the trolley and rode to St.
Augustine Distillery. The small
distillery makes Vodka from sugar cane as well as gin. They are starting to produce a Bourbon but it
will be several years until it has aged to the point of being available to
market. We were impressed that the
distillery uses heirloom sugar cane and purchases all of their ingredients from
locally grown, non GMO sources. The
Vodka was a decent drink but neither of us likes gin so we were not tempted to
have any of their products shipped home.
Since we are not vodka or gin drinkers, we are not the best judges of
the spirts produced there.
Since the rain was still heavy when we left the distillery,
we took the trolley for the short ride to the San Sebastian Winery where we
toured the wine making facilities and learned that their wines are made from Muscadine grapes which grown
much better in the subtropical climate than many other traditional wine
grapes. We had an extensive tasting of a
number of red and white wines that ranged from very dry to sweet port and
sherry. We enjoyed the tasting very
much. After spending about an hour in
the San Sebastian Winery, the rain had actually intensified so we took a short
trolley ride to Whetstone
Chocolates. We were disappointed
that the last tour of the day had departed so we browsed the gift shop then
caught the trolley back toward where we had parked the rental car. Since we were pretty much soaked, we decided
to drive back to the Super
8 in Daytona to dry off and change clothes before going out to dinner in
Daytona.
We tried to eat at Caribbean
Jack’s but it was under renovation so we went to Bay
Street Seafood nearby. We had
excellent meals at great prices. I had blackened
catfish and Mary had local butterfly shrimp.
Her shrimp had a slightly different taste and texture than other shrimp
we have had but they were quite good. We
both had homemade onion rings and cole slaw on the side. We both enjoyed our meals and the bill for
both of our meals was $25. We drove back
across the Halifax River to our room at the Super
8.
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