Our room at the Quality Inn in Vidalia, Georgia, last night was very nice. We awoke to rain (again). It had rained on and off since we left home Saturday morning! We drove down to the historic district of Vidalia, not sure what we would see. The town's water tower was quite interesting, so Smoky took a photo of it. On the way out of town we drove past the Vidalia Onion Factory Museum and Gift Shop! We couldn't resist checking it out. I could just imagine what kind of oniony knick-knacks I could find for gifts! Alas, it didn't open till 11, and we didn't really want to hang around that long.
Smoky spotted what looked like an interesting town to travel through -- Santa Claus! We were hoping to take advantage of the post office we had heard about in the town, but the only thing we could find that even identified the town was the Santa Claus Storage Center. Not exactly what we had hoped for. And it was still raining.
We drove on down Highway 1 toward Jacksonville (still raining) and on to St. Augustine (yea, some blue sky and scattered clouds!). It was around 3 when we found our motel, which is located in the historic area of St. Augustine. Smoky and I had thought we would enjoy exploring some of the old buildings and especially the Castillo de San Marcos, construction of which began in 1672. Built of native coquina stone quarried on Anastasia Island off the coast near St. Augustine, the fort is a fascinating piece of architecture . . . and a very popular tourist attraction! We headed there first after dropping our car at the motel, and there were people everywhere. The views from the top of the Castillo looking over the Matanzas Bay are beautiful, especially in the late afternoon light.
Figuring we were going to be competing with the thousands of people milling around this historic district for a place to have dinner, we left the Castillo a few minutes before it closed and strolled down some residential streets. It was amazingly quiet and calm here, and we saw some most interesting places. One gentleman (who resembled Santa himself) came out on his porch to chat and told us he thought the house we were photographing next door got more attention than the oldest house in St. Augustine!
We crossed San Marco Avenue and headed down West Castillo Drive to Barnacle Bill's Seafood Restaurant, beating the crowd by maybe 5 minutes! The Caribbean Mango Mahi Mahi was wonderful, and the sides were surprising -- baked sweet potatoes, collard greens, field peas, butter beans, fried okra, broccoli casserole, steamed squash. Apparently the list of vegetables varies from night to night. And the desserts were homemade. We tried their key lime pie and rated it very good! I'm sure there will be some other pieces of this pie on our menus before this adventure ends.
After dinner we walked across the gathering area in front of the Visitor Information Center and were astounded by the number of people lined up to take a trolley, one of which was labeled "Ghosts and Graveyards"! Past the Visitor Center, we headed down Cordova Street in search of the Chocolate Turtle, a dessert and coffee bar recommended by one of the Visitor Center guides earlier. We got our selections -- one chocolate turtle and one chocolate hazelnut torte -- to go, but every single item in the shop looked wonderful.
We wandered around some more, marveling at all the shops and eateries and people, and headed back down St. George Street toward our motel. Then we spotted an ice cream and gelato shop, Whetstone Chocolates, and couldn't resist going in. They had some interesting flavors of sorbet, one of which really caught our eye -- pineapple basil. One small sample and we were hooked. So we added a small cup of this amazing sorbet to our already very full stomachs. But it was worth every bite.
Tomorrow we'll explore a little more and then head for Ormond Beach.
-- Shann
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