Saint Augustine, FL

For some reason David Bowie appears to me in a dream tonight. I have no idea what it means but I seem to be playing percussion with him on a beach in Brighton, while he makes me promise that it's all top secret. You have my word, Mr Bowie! 

I'm still a little confused when I wake up, drawing back the curtains to unwittingly expose myself to the people of Jacksonville. Thankfully it being a Sunday, there's no one around and at 15 floors up, they'd have to have eagle eyes to be offended anyway. However it's a cloudy old day out there. 

I don't let the overcast skies dampen my mood though and bound down to breakfast with Eleanor and Paul to make plans for the day. With the band having high-tailed it out of town ahead of time and the key interviews done, there's nothing to keep us in Jacksonville for our final night so we decide to check out of the hotel early and head to a cute little place thirty miles away called Saint Augustine.

But there's confusion reigning at the front desk as they keep mischarging my credit card for erroneous things and printing off incorrect receipts. By the time I finally have what appears to be a correct bill poor old Paul and Eleanor have been sat waiting patiently in the lobby for nearly 45 minutes. 

We still have some short phoners to do to round off the feature so I contact Todd to arrange them and he lets me know the band have just arrived in Birmingham, Alabama, having driven through the night.  Once Sean and Mike have had a chance to rest and freshen up we'll get the phone chats done, but as that'll be a while yet, we jump in a cab and head for Saint Augustine, having changed our booking and located a cheap motel there, thus saving money in the process. Result!

It takes about forty minutes to drive down the freeway and as we pull into Saint Augustine it's obvious we've made the right choice. This is America's oldest continually inhabited city, having been founded 50 years after Jose Ponce de Leon landed in Florida by another Spanish explorer, Pedro Menendez de Aviles, and is as colourful and interesting as Jacksonville is functional and dull. 

Historic buildings and forts, pretty houses, cobbled streets and quaint little restaurants abound and the skies have cleared to a clear blue afternoon, bathing everything in glorious hot sunshine. We pull up at the Best Western Bayfront Inn motel on Avenida Menendez, facing out onto the water and built in the style of a Spanish colonial hacienda, and make ourselves known at reception.  

Unfortunately the credit card problems seem to have followed me. As soon as the receptionist tries to authorise my Amex card I get a text from the UK warning me of fraud. I phone home to assure them that I genuinely am trying to check in to a motel in a small Florida town, and am not some redneck fraudster trying to enact my own version of 'Psycho'. Eventually we secure our rooms. 

It's almost 2pm by now so we head out for a wander round the historic district and hopefully some lunch. The motel, as its name suggests, is right on the bay front and we follow the road towards the Bridge of Lions passing lots of cute little buildings, bars and restaurants thinking we'll walk as far as The Oldest House, one of the key sights. 

Our jaunt down Avenida Menendez leads us off the beaten track and down very pretty little streets that are reminiscent of Key West, a few hundred miles to the south. Little clapperboard houses, ramshackle and covered in bougainvillea flowers, line the quiet roads, all tranquility and tropical heat, and soon we stumble upon Gonzalez-Alvarez, the Oldest House. 

There's been a succession of wooden dwellings on this site since 1650, but when the English burned St Augustine down in 1707, the residents rebuilt in stone and that building survives to this day. 

From there we walk up Charlotte Street, past the Spanish Military Hospital to King Street where some of the grandest buildings are to be found. The Lightner Museum and Flagler College are imposing, cathedral like structures that were built as 5 star hotels (Hotel Alcazar and Hotel Ponce de Leon) by Henry Flagler, who co-founded Standard Oil with J D Rockefeller, and was as rich as they come. He visited St Augustine in 1883, realised it could be a tourist mecca for the wealthy and boom!... that was the start of Florida's entire tourist industry. 

While neither building remains a hotel, next door to them is the very grand Casa Monica hotel, that wouldn't look out of place in Monte Carlo. It sure beats our Best Western motel! And as we cross the street to venture down the pedestrianised, Disney-style cutesyness of St George Street, we get a message from Todd telling us that Sean and Mike are ready to do their phone interviews NOW, so we high-tail it back from the sumptuous grandeur before us, and within five minutes are in the motel parking lot. 

Eleanor grabs her things and we dial Birmingham, Alabama, and get Sean on the phone. Starving by this point having not stopped for lunch, Paul and I venture next door to a little bar which sadly doesn't seem to serve food. However it does provide Corona so we sit in the sun, chatting and people watching for an hour while Eleanor finishes the feature. 

It's 4.30 by the time she's done and slightly tipsy, due to a cold beer and lack of food, we all head back to St George Street where, in amongst the souvenir shops, we find the Bull and Crown Publick House, proudly flying a Union Jack on its verandah. 

"Aye welcome ye, good fellows", says a girl in 18th century costume in the most strangulated attempt at a British accent I've ever heard. It's so bad it makes Dick van Dyke sound like he came from Brixton! Swftly telling her that we are in fact British and she should drop the act pronto as it might fool the Yanks but it ain't working with us, she shows us to a seat and brings some dips and bread to take the edge of our ravenous hunger.  

Across the street is the Monk's Vineyard, which for some reason has an Irish folk band going fiddle-di-dee outside. In fact there seem to be Irish pubs all over Saint Augustime and Jacksonville. Amazing how they've been intertwined into a Florida history that's firmly Spanish, French and British in colonial fighting, yet a mini Ireland has been created to run alongside. Marketing genius from Guinness me thinks!!

Hunger sated for now we potter down past the Old City Gates and the Pirate & Treasure Museum to Castillo de San Marcos, the old fort. Being late Sunday afternoon it's shut but during the week they have guys in period costume manning the remparts and re-enacting the naval bombardments. We wander round the still accessible bits of the walls and straddle the cannons, gazing out to the distant Atlantic on the horizon past the Tolomato River, on which bay Saint Augustine sits. 

It's past six o'clock by now and we're all pretty shattered so we head back to the motel and get an hour or so's sleep, reconvening at 8pm to find a bit of dinner. Harry's New Orleans Seafood restaurant is a short walk away and has a lovely fairy-lit outdoor courtyard, marred only by a dreadful male singer murdering Joni Mitchell and Janis Joplin classics. 

We munch down on redfish, mahi mahi and chicken, closing our ears to his strained groaning, and chatting peacefully as the night and our trip comes to a close. A nightcap at the Tiki bar next to the motel rounds things off, sending sleep our way ahead of tomorrow's long journey home. 

Thank the Lord we got outta Jacksonville...