London, United Kingdom
Time to go home, and it's gonna be a long, long day; from pick up time in Saint Augustine until I'm back in the office and sat at my desk is going to be twenty hours of travelling and killing time in airports, and then another six or seven beyond that until I can walk through my front door and collapse into bed. So better have a decent breakfast to set me up for what's to come.
There's no restaurant in the motel so we're sent a couple of doors down the bayfront to the Harbor View Cafe, where Paul and I get omelettes and coffee, while Eleanor settles for a couple of slices of toast. Suitably fortified Paul heads off to explore the old fort, Castillo de San Marcos, while Eleanor and I head back to St George Street to wander along in the sunshine and do a little souvenir shopping.
It's around 10am on a Monday morning and the whole historic area is almost deserted, in stark contrast to yesterday's tourist hordes, our only fellow sightseers a party of 10 year-old kids on a school trip, all wandering along in matching maroon t-shirts emblazoned with 'Saint Augustine Field Trip 2013' on the front.
We stop off at various shops, including weird little arcades with odd fortune telling machines and waxworks, picking up the occasional fridge magnet and jar of barbecue sauce as we go. In one such hidden-away row of shops I notice a toilet and nip in to use the facilities, which bizarrely includes a microwave oven where the cistern should be.
Within moments there's a loud banging at the door, and as I put the seat down I realise there's no flush and a big sign on the seat (which had been raised when I entered) saying Do Not Use. Oops!!
I open the door to be confronted by a man from the little ghostly occult shop we'd passed, with glinting jewellery on his fingers and a snarl upon his face. "Ah," I say, "I didn't realise this was out of order". He looks at me with incandescent hatred. "This is private. You should leave right now!"
I scurry past his puce outrage and catch up with Eleanor, whom he had barged past to confront me, and we hurry out of his little empire and step out into the sunshine again. How very weird! We can’t stop laughing….
Perhaps to counter his spooky venom our next stop is the cathedral on King Street which is beautiful and, with its piped monastic chanting and traces of incense in the air, instantly bestows tranquil meditation upon us. After a few minutes looking around we walk back to Avenida Menendez by the bay, and return to the motel to complete our packing.
Paul has also returned having enjoyed his exploration of the Castillo's museum, and we're soon in the van I've pre-booked to take us to the airport. As we travel I exchange emails with Chuck and Todd, receiving some final information and quotes for Eleanor's feature, ensuring that despite the band having taken us by surprise and leaving earlier than arranged, we have absolutely everything required from them before we get on the plane.
The journey takes about an hour and we're there in plenty of time, in fact we have three hours to kill in a relatively small provincial airport before our flight. Considering we're also going to have a four hour stopover in Miami, there's going to be a lot of thumb-twiddling boredom to contend with today.
A full exploration of Jacksonville airport establishes that there is precisely one small restaurant of any decency to occupy us, so we have a lunchtime burger and kill time doing emails and catching up on various things before boarding our little American Eagle flight south to Miami.
As we fly the skies outside get progressively darker and by the time we're over Miami huge black clouds surround us, buffeting the plane with turbulence and the occasional flash of lightning. We fly over freeways lit up in vast rows of car headlights despite it only being five o'clock in the afternoon and land in pouring rain that chucks itself at the aircraft's windows in torrents of water.
Unlike our arrival in Miami a few days ago, we're in no rush - a mind-numbing four hours stretch before us until we board our next flight. So we bumble along, retracing our frantic steps of Friday in far more leisurely style, re-boarding the Sky Train to head to our terminal and examine whatever distractions we can find to ease the pain of waiting.
Sadly, American airports are generally rubbish at providing bars and restaurants of any note, unlike the UK where there's always a 24-hour drinking hole to alleviate the tedium. The small, neon-lit concessions on offer here in Miami are soul-destroyingly awful and we walk the length of the terminal before finding somewhere to sit together and kick our heels for the next few hours.
Finally, after some terrible food and a couple of libations, we head towards our gate, noticing that the rain has cleared and there's a beautiful sunset over the airport. It's a nice little farewell and so we board the last plane of our trip, crossing the Atlantic and very much ready for home. Eyemask, earplugs and sleeping pills to hand I sink into my seat and hope that unconsciousness will whisk the hours away.
It's been fun but our trip is done... goodnight my friends, until the next time.
