A day in St Augustine
For you have been called to live in freedom, my brothers and sisters. But don’t use your freedom to satisfy your sinful nature. Instead, use your freedom to serve one another in love.
Galatians 5:13
We (Mary & I, not we the bus load) started the day bright and early by crawling out of bed and starting to assemble lasagna. I had already browned the meats and gotten the tomato part ready in Wichita before we left. It’s been in the freezer. Last night we mixed the cottage cheese/parmesan part in a baggie. Since we had bought the kind of noodles that don’t need to be boiled first, all we had to do was assemble and cook. We had brought the roaster into our room last night. Wish I had taken a pic of us scooting the hot roaster full of 2 pans of lasagna out of the hotel on their luggage cart.
Our first stop in St Augustine was the Light House. I climbed the 219 steps with a 77 year old man. Each time we came to an open window, he leaned out and waved to his wife. So sweet. After around 200 stairs, he stopped at the landing and said, “this is as far as I can go”. I looked up the stairs and saw daylight. “We are almost there!” I told him. “You can’t stop now!” He made it all the way, but then decided not to actually go out on the outside part. I’m still impressed he made it all the way up. For some reason this light house didn’t seem as much of a climb as the one on Tybee Island. When I first started climbing the other one, a little claustrophobia started kicking in. Every now and then in certain situations it hits me and I have to remind myself that there is no reason that I will need to get down in a hurry and I will be just fine. This lighthouse was a walk in the park. So to speak. Maybe because they had fun stuff to read on every other landing, which kinda broke it up. I didn’t get a picture of the ones that climbed it because every body went up and back down at their own pace.
We decided it was too hot to have a picnic today since there was no wind, so we ate lunch on the bus. That’s easier anyway.
After lunch we did another Hop-On-Hop-Off trolley. Except that these were actually not trolleys. More like those cart things you ride through garden tours. Maybe called trams. Our tickets from the Savannah trolley had an advertisement that you could save $2 per ticket if you showed them your ticket when you bought your new ticket for the St Augustine trolley. Always looking for the bargain, I called the company and asked if we had to actually have everyone’s tickets or if I could show my receipt for all 18. She was very nice and said, no problem I could just give her my receipt number and she could take care of it all over the phone. I asked if $2 off would be better than their group rate and she said that they didn’t have a group rate. Then I asked if they had a senior rate since we are mostly seniors. Nope. This was the best we could get. So I gave her the credit card info and we finished the deal over the phone. She emailed me a receipt and texted me something to scan for our tickets. Perfect. So we arrived and Tyna came out and gave everyone a map and a sticker to show that they had paid. I showed her the scan thing on my phone and she got a funny look on her face. Uh oh. She took me to the office to talk to Kathy. Big uh oh. Kathy looked at the scan thing on my phone and said. “That’s not us. You were supposed to come in here to pay.” What!?! I pulled out my flyer and showed her the number on the front that I had called. Apparently it was two different phone numbers for the same company, different departments. “No. We have a contract with USA Tours and you are only supposed to get tickets through us. We are the group ticket sales.” WHAT!????! I told her about my conversation with the other lady and that no one had mentioned that I had to buy the tickets from her. The last trolley ride I just bought them all from the kiosk. Bottom line: I had paid $180 too much for non-refundable tickets. Yikes! Luckily Kathy was on the ball and she offered to go talk to her GM and see what could be done. A few minutes later, she came back and said that they would issue USA Tours a check for the difference and mail it to the office. Yay for Kathy!
We hopped on the tram and learned lots of interesting info that I have already forgotten. But luckily we heard the Henry Ford/Spanish Moss story again. A few stops before we came to the fort, it started to pour down rain. The trolley driver pulled over and handed out rain ponchos to everyone. That was a thoughtful, unexpected little perk. Fortunately two stops later, when we got off at the fort, it had already quit raining and gotten hot again.We decided to just walk around the outside of the fort a bit and then get back on the trolley.
After everyone arrived back from the trolley ride we boarded the Big Bus and headed back to Jacksonville Beach. The passengers were on their own for dinner tonight so I offered some of our leftovers to them and ended up making about 6 to go plates. The pimento sandwiches and the lasagna were in high demand. I also made a few peanut butter sandwiches. Imagine that. Saul and Mary and I walked over to a seafood restaurant called Salt Life because we had a hankering for some fresh seafood. It did not disappoint.
