Sonya's Blog - Day 192 - New Years Eve!!

Sonya’s Blog - Day 192- December 31st - New Years Eve!

Today we are going into St. Augustine and taking the Old Town Trolley Tour. First, Kizmet needs her walk on the beach. Blake and I took her for another nice walk this morning and it was lovely.

Once the kids were up and dressed we packed up and took off for St. Augustine. The trolley company has free parking if you are taking the tour, so that is handy. We got our tickets and hopped on the next trolley. St. Augustine has a long history and it all starts with the Spanish in the 1500’s. There are many things named after Juan Ponce de Leon as he “discovered” Florida in 1513. There is evidence that he was not the first explorer to Florida and, of course, the native population was already well established in the area. What he did discover, was the Gulf Stream, which made a big difference to ships returning to Spain from Florida. It was like a slingshot back to their homeland and greatly reduced travel time. He also discovered the “Fountain of Youth”, which is a massive tourist attraction. He was a busy man and involved in lots of exploring and in being a conquistador. He also helped establish a colony on Haiti and the Dominican Republic as well as Puerto Rico, so he didn’t stay long in Florida. He did give Florida it’s name, though. He landed at Easter time and to the Spaniards this is called Pascua Florida, which is “feast of flowers” and Florida by itself means “flowery”. So it was Easter and Florida had lots of flowers, hence the name. He left for awhile and then came back in 1521 to try and set up a colony. Things did not go so well for him and he ended up being shot with an arrow when Calusa warriors attacked the colony. He died from the injury a little while later.

It sounds like the Spaniards gave up on colonizing Florida for quite a number of years. In the 1560’s the French Huguenots established a colony near Jacksonville. Well the King Phillip was furious with this and sent his most trusted general, Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles, to go and colonize the territory, once an for all. He was also ordered to get rid of the french colony. Menendez landed on the Feast day of St. Augustine, August 28th, 1565 and there is a massive cross at the sight of his landing. Picture here:

They immediately held mass when they disembarked which intrigued the local natives. This was good for Menendez and helped to ensure his success in establishing St. Augustine. Once they established their little village they took off after the Huguenots who had set up a garrison on the St. Johns River. The garrison was not well defended and Menendez quickly destroyed it and killed all the men. When they got back to St. Augustine the natives told him that a fleet of ships had been looking for them. They set off in search of these ships, but a hurricane did most of the work for them by destroying the ships and killing many of the soldiers. Menendez asked them if they were Catholic, which they are not (Huguenots are Protestant) and he slaughtered them. They were willing to convert and do whatever it took, but he killed them anyhow as he felt he did not have enough supplies to support extra men. It became known as the day of Matanzas, which means slaughter and is now the name of the river. After that, he was successful in establishing his colony, which makes St. Augustine the oldest permanent European settlement in North America.

The next major influence on St. Augustine came in the 1800’s with Henry Flagler. He was a successful business man by this time, being one of the founders of Standard Oil, and came to St. Augustine on his honeymoon with his second wife. He loved the San Marco Hotel he stayed at and found the city to be charming. He felt it could be a major tourist attraction and set about to build his own luxury hotel. The Hotel Ponce de Leon opened on January 10, 1888 and it was a great success and very posh. The railroad only went as far as Jacksonville, so he bought up the railroad companies and brought the railroad to St. Augustine. He then expanded his business down the coast of Florida and built a hotel in West Palm Beach and expanded the railroad as well. Later he would take the railroad, and his hotel business, to Miami and finally to Key West. He also helped finance several churches, the jail and other such things. Curiously, his main competition to his hotel in St. Augustine was the very one he spent his honeymoon at. This hotel burned to the ground in 1897 and was most certainly the work of arsonists. When the firefighters went to fight the fire, all the hoses had been cut. They never found out who started the fire, but Flagler did not like competition. An associate of his also provided competition by building a hotel, The Casa Monica near the Ponce de Leon. It opened a week after the Ponce de Leon and it was not a success. Several things plagued the opening, not the least of which a lot of the furniture for the hotel was held up on the railroad, which was owned by Flagler - MMM! The owner of the Casa Monica was not able to make a go of it and the hotel was sold to Flagler for pennies on the dollar. Flagler changed the name. Interestingly, of all the hotels only the Casa Monica is still in operation today (the name was changed back to the original several years later). All Flagler’s other hotels in St. Augustine are used for other purposes today.

Main Entrance to the Ponce de Leon Hotel, today it is a College:

So we learned all this and more on our trolley tour. We took the tour all the way around and then stopped for lunch which Blake had packed. We then hopped back on the trolley and took it to St. George Street. This is a quaint little street to walk down that has many historic homes along it. All of these homes have been converted to businesses now and so it is a little shopping and eating district in the old Spanish section of the town. We stopped for something cold to eat and then walked down to the end of the street.

The above picture is an example of Coquina (means little shells). The fort and many of the old buildings are made from this, it was mined by the Spanish on Anastasia Island. It is very durable, once it has dried out, virtuably indestructible. It is not used anymore, as it is a valuable natural product and they didn't want it over mined.

The Catholic Church is at the end (one of the churches that Flagler helped to finance) and we popped inside for a look see. It is pretty magnificent, you got to hand it to those Catholics - they know how to build an awe inspiring church.

This was voted one of the prettiest streets in America, the Fountain of Youth is off this street:

We decided to head back to camp because we needed to walk Kizmet before we headed to the Beach Blast Off New Years Eve Bash at St. Augustine Beach Pier. Kizmet was very happy to see us and enjoyed her walk. We then had something to eat and got ready to leave. The beach party was from 5 until 10 and we could take Kizmet, except they were going to have fireworks so we wanted to leave her behind as fireworks terrify her. We left all the fans running and the radio on for her. The pier is about 5 KM’s away, so she wasn’t going to hear those fireworks, but you never know what is going to be set off in the neighbourhoods. They are banned in our campground, so that is a little bit of comfort.

There is not a lot of parking near the pier, but the town of Augustine Beach was offering a shuttle service from several parking lots to the pier. We first tried the City Hall lot, but it was already full so we headed to the next one. We managed to find parking there, but there was a really long line-up for the shuttle (school bus). After about 5 busses we managed to get on one and were on our way. As it turns out, this parking lot is the closest one to the pier and it probably would have been faster to walk it (only 1 1/2 KM’s or so). It was absolutely packed, but we found our way to the stage and managed to find a place to sit to watch the band. There were lots of activities for the kids, lots of food booths so the people were spread out all over. The first band, Old Enough 2 Know Better, were not that great. They had a hard time with their harmony and staying on key, but they mostly sang classics that everyone knew and sang along to. The next band was the self proclaimed “greatest band in the galaxy” or something like that. They were called Papercut and they certainly had personality. Almost all the guys had long, blond wigs on. The one guy did not, but that is because he had great hair and needed no embellishment. I could not get great photos, but these are the best I had:

They did 80’s rocker tunes - Bon Jovi, Twisted Sister, Ozzy Osborne, etc. The lead singer didn’t have the strongest voice, but he made up for it by getting the crowd going and have “amazing” dance moves. He did forget some lyrics, which I found amusing, but he just mumbled his way through those spots or yelled “everyone make some noise” or some such thing! They were hilarious and having fun up there, so that is worth a lot - especially to a New Years crowd that wants to have fun.

The Papercut’s set was split up by the fireworks display and a couple of songs by a new recording artist I had never heard of and don’t remember her name. She had a great voice though. The fireworks were much more impressive and went on a lot longer than I would have guessed for a small community. They were really good and we had perfect seats. They seemed like they were right in front of us. We had no idea where they were going to be set off, so we just lucked out.

The crowd started to leave right after the fireworks were over. We stayed for about 4 or 5 more songs from Papercut in the hopes that the line wouldn’t be too long for the bus to get back to our truck. I dragged Isaac and Blake up to the crowd in front of the stage to watch the show. Natasha was so not interested in this band and couldn’t believe how bad it was and why couldn’t it be more like the celebration in Kansas City on July 4th. She had brought her headphones and ipad and sat in her beach chair listening to 21 Pilots - she was so not impressed with this event. She did like the fireworks though.

After 4 or 5 songs we headed over to the busses to see what was up. Well the line-up was crazy long. We decided to walk back to the truck, because without question, we would be faster. The walk was really nice and we made it to the truck in about a half hour.

When we got back to the RV at about 10:30, Kizmet was in good spirits so we took her out right away because we didn’t hear any fireworks. We had only been out about 5 minutes before we heard some in the distance and she wanted to go back. They were not really close, so that was good. We still had all the fans going, but you could still faintly hear them. Natasha wanted to stay up and watch the ball drop in Times Square, so we waited for that. Natasha did some blog posting and Isaac and Blake played some video games. I just read my book. We watched the ball drop, said Happy New Year and then hit the sack. We are huge party animals, as you can tell. I barely made it to midnight!

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

Sonya