Saint Augustine, Florida

After ariving in Orlando, I drove up US Highway 1 to Saint Augustine – a historic town that I heard about on an Amateur Traveler podcast.

Saint Augustine is the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in the US.

It has many old buildings, such as this school house.

An old church.

Many of the streets are brick cobble stone.

There are many small interesting buildings in the town.

Large buildings too.

Many buildings in Saint Augustine are made from a Coquina, a sedimentary rock composed of fragments of shell.

One of the houses is called The Oldest House.

This Old Spanish Fort was built to protect the city from the British. The intersting thing about Saint Augustine is that it was originally a Spanish city, then became British, then Spanish and then British again.

One of the more touristy things to visit in Saint Augustine is the Fountain of Youth.

This spring got its name because Juan Ponce de León, who led the first European expedition to Florida, drank from it and lived to the unusually old age of 61. This and other Florida themes are wonderfully captured in the Donald Duck cartoon, Don’s Fountain of Youth!