After a 44 hours passage from the Bahamas to Fort Pierce, then another 28 hours overnighter to St Augustine, we were exhausted and ready for a long and needed R&R. We arrived in St Augustine just past noontime, picked up a mooring from the city marina and checked in for a full week.

We were in St Augustine last December for the City of Lights festival. This time it’s nice to be back here without feeling the pressure of needing to explore the city like we did the first time. We desperately needed to rest our tired old bodies, but more importantly, getting ourselves back into a more normal routine; we did what many people usually do – just wing it and see what happens.

We barely got off the boat the first two days except to take showers at the marina and going for quick bites. We went to bed early like two senior citizens and slept until occasional passing boat waves woke us up. The third day we started to feel like humans again and finally poked our heads out and we were ready to have some fun.

Traveling has different stages and requires different mindsets. Ours are very different now than they were during the beginning of our trip. We’ve started making our way home slowly. If it wasn’t for the cold weather back in Boston, we would have sailed home in about 2 weeks, but until that happens, we’ll wait until some signs of Spring back home before we turn up the gas pedal. Meanwhile, we’ve taken down our explorer’s hats and replaced them with vacationer’s hats, we’re now officially tourists. It’s so MUCH more relaxing this way.

First thing we did was to take a tour of a famous family owned and locally operated artisan chocolate factory, Whestone Chocolates. Before going into the actual factory, we were lead into an area where the tour guide went through the history of chocolate and the process of taking a raw cocoa bean and turning it into a piece that’s ready to eat. Then we learned about the history of this amazing company, the Whetstone chocolate making process, and a little about what sets different chocolates apart. The best part is the 4-tiered tasting in which we learned about the subtle differences in milk chocolate, dark chocolate, white chocolate and cocoa nibs. But of course the entire point of a chocolate factory is that you can make it with any other ingredients you can fathom and Whetstone does just that. They make chocolates with tons of flavors added in from orange to berries and spices. Incidentally, during the tour, they were making the popular once-a-year Peeps, since Easter is right around the corner. We topped off the tour with a scoop of their famous Gelato ice cream.

Since we’ve not seen any alligators on our trip, we decided to visit the Alligator Farm on Anastasia Island. The name is misleading: the Saint Augustine Alligator Farm is neither a farm nor just for alligators. While there is a part of history where the Alligator Farm really did raise gators in a sense of “farming” them, it’s no longer the case and it is now much more of a zoological garden. Yes, there is a heavy focus on alligators and other crocodilians, but there’s much more.

The variety of crocs and gators was really impressive. We knew that there was the Nile crocodile and the Florida gator, but we didn’t know the variety was so vast:  crocs from 5 continents, gators from 2, caimans, gharials. They’re all separated by species and then regionally within each.  Just walking through and seeing the many types side by side, we were blown away.

Next day Claudia booked us a tour of historical Flagler College, formerly Hotel Ponce De Leon. It was fun to walk around this small college campus especially to see the centerpiece of the college, the Hotel Ponce de Leon, a National Historic Landmark that is now part of the college. Built by Henry Flagler in 1888, his first in a series of luxury resorts along Florida’s east coast as part of his plan to create the American Riviera. The building is a prime example of Spanish Renaissance architecture and the first major poured-in-place concrete building in the United States and is now known as Ponce de Leon Hall. A National Historic Landmark, it is now the showpiece for Flagler College.

The final night in St Augustine, we went to see a brilliant magic and mind-reading show with magician Bill Abbott at the iconic Casa Monica Resort hotel. We were ushered into a 20 seats boutique showroom with a vintage jazz vibe, the most intimate magic shows venue we’ve ever experienced. His performance was not only amazing but really funny at the same time with mind-bending illusions happening literally inches away from us. The whole night, his magic along with his showmanship, sarcasm and dry humor transported us to a different headspace and kept us living in the moment. We walked out of the show and were dumbfounded and puzzled by his act, truly a wonderful way to end our visit in St Augustine.

Tomorrow we continue north towards Jacksonville to our next destination, Fernandina Beach.