| I began last Saturday crouched behind a bunker with teenage boys firing at me, while my husband Paul yelled things like “Advance! Be brave!” No, I had not just been whisked away to a war zone, but only to M.I. Paintball in fabulous St. Augustine. You’ll have to wait for my feature article about the experience for more details but suffice to say I not only survived; it was fun and you should try it! (By the way, Paul was sitting outside the paintball playing field while he was exhorting me to be braver.) And yes, if I can do it, so can you – I’m 52 years old and had never played before.
St. Augustine is not only the nation’s oldest continuously settled city (founded in 1565, a whopping half a century before the Pilgrims set foot at Plymouth Rock) but is also a rockin’ place to go for adventure and a good time.
St. Augustine Beach is lovely and you can drive your car on it so you don't have to carry stuff like towels, chairs, and coolers by hand. You also don’t have to feed money to parking meters and drive around for half an hour trying to find a place to park, which is even better.
You can surf the great waves there, ride boogie-boards, skim-board, play volleyball, swim, build sand castles or just relax and soak up some rays (though I don’t think tanning can really be considered a sport). You can even bring your dog!
The St. Johns County Pier at St. Augustine Beach features not only outside showers where you can rinse off the ocean, but also an outside water play area, which is kind of like a big sprinkler park. The kids there absolutely loved the place. I have never seen anything like this on a public beach and thought it was a nifty free service.
After lunch by the beach at Mango Mangos – which was fantastic – Paul and I wandered into this cool store, Extreme Kites Kiteboarding. You can sign up for kite-boarding lessons there, plus it has massive amounts of water-sports equipment in stock. The other side of the shop sells the kind of kites you fly (also a great beach activity) plus all kinds of kite related items including kite line, windsocks and spin socks. We bought a new windsock shaped like a big fish for our dock at home.
After that, we checked out beautiful old town St. Augustine, starting with the Castillo de San Marco, a 330 year old fort that has a big moat around it. It was truly amazing. Click here to see Authentic Florida Expert Lucy Beebe Tobias’s video of it. The video is great, but the fort is even more impressive in real life.
Old town features cool little shops, museums, trolley tours, boat tours, ghost tours, horse-drawn-carriage-tours and horse-drawn-carriage-ghost-tours. We bought ice-cream, admired art, tasted wine, and finally noshed on brushetta atop a balcony while we enjoyed live jazz a street musician played.
I was so excited about the place when I got home I immediately sent my parents about 20 photos and a note telling them they had to go. You should, too!
Here are more VISIT FLORIDA articles about St. Augustine. |
