April 12, Day 291 – In St. Augustine

Today was mostly spent doing chores. Gerry worked on installing his new speakers. It ended up being much more work than he’d thought. Linda did laundry, dealt with issues that had surfaced when we received our mail the other day and made appetizers for happy hour the next couple of days.

At 5:00 we joined the other MTOAers for Hors d’oeuvres and drinks. Lots of yummy food. After stuffing our faces, we decided to take a walk through St. Augustine. We walked past Flager College and then through the St. Augustine Historic District. We found the Bistro named “The Monk’s Vineyard”. As we were taking a picture, the owner came out and offered to take our picture under the sign. Then we went inside and had a couple of glasses of wine and talked about “Monks”. We bought a couple of bottles that have The Monk’s Vineyard label on them. Gerry gave him his cap which, of course, had Monk’s Vineyard on it. It was fun talking about the boat and the Monk name.

Back at the boat we watched TV (24) and then off to bed.

As mentioned before, we're here for an MTOA rendezvous. Here's the banner on the marina seawall.

There was a huge attendance at tonight's happy hour

... and more people being happy!

The logo for MTOA is the turtle .... so turtles were everywhere

We took a walk into town. This building was originally built by Henry Flagler in 1888 as the Alcazar Hotel. In 1947 it was deeded to the city of St. Augustine to be used for a museum. In 1973, after a few years of remodeling it reopened as the St. Augustine City Hall on the first floor and the museum on the second floor.

This, and the next few shots are of Flagler College. The buildings were originally built as a luxury hotel in 1888 by Henry Flager. It opened as a college in 1968 thanks to the vision of Henry Flagler's grandson. The college is rated as one of the best liberal arts colleges in the southeast and as one of the most beautiful campuses in the U.S.

Here are a couple of street scenes in historic St. Augustine

According to the sign, this is the oldest wooden school house in the U.S.

Look, here we are under The Monk's Vineyard sign

A closeup of the sign

Inside at the bar. Definitely a wine and Monk theme.

Looking out at the boats in the marina. All of the slips are full, with well over 50 of them filled with MTOA attendees.

We have a very tame heron on the dock