Sightseeing in St. Augustine

 

Today is moving day.  We are driving west through the panhandle of Florida to Carrabelle, Florida, which is on the gulf coast.

Yesterday we did some sightseeing in St. Augustine to finish up our stay here.  The day turned out to be very hot and humid so walking around created some discomfort, but hey that is Florida!

We went back to the historic district and ended up taking a tour of the Father O’Reilly house.  This was a house built by the parish priest back in the 1700’s and later became a convent for French nuns.  What was interesting about this place was the tour guide and the obsession with being “The Oldest House” in St. Augustine or in America.  There is already an attraction in St. Augustine called “The oldest house in America”.  It is just a couple of blocks from the Father O’Reilly house, but this tour guide told us the State of Florida did some recent testing on the foundation of the Father O’Reilly house and the tests indicate this house is actually older.  Now this is only the foundation as the house itself has been rebuilt many times over the years. 

Father O’Reilly house

From there we went to the fort built by the Spanish to guard the city.  This is an amazing stone structure that sits near the water.  It has a large moat surrounding it with draw bridges and cannon placements on all sides of the roof.  It is now a national monument and was quite interesting.

Inside the fort

The courtyard from the roof

Cannon placements and view from the roof

Difficult to show in a picture but from the wall of the fort to the gray line on the right of the picture is the moat that surrounds the fort (now grass).

Following the fort we made one last stop on our way back to our RV and you can read about that in my personal note post that I posted yesterday.