St. Augustine -- Part 1

Shaun and I live for adventure. Adventure in that we love to make memories with one another, mostly through travel experiences.

But travel can get expensive... fast. And being military, we have the rare privilege of living in new places on a fairly regular basis. So our philosophy while living in Florida has been to see everything we want to within driving distance. Disney? Check. New Orleans? Check. Atlanta? Check.

It makes sense (both logical and economical) to just bloom where you're planted. And right now, we're planted in Northwest Florida. Therefore, we had another city on our local-ish map we had to check off for a 4-day spring break trip: St. Augustine, Florida; the nation's oldest city.

Another philosophy of ours -- when making memories traveling, few are made within the four walls of your lodging accomodations, so you shouldn't break the bank on where you sleep. Because of this philosophy, we have fallen in love with Priceline.com, the website where you can name your own price for a hotel. We've done it for each of the aforementioned cities, and St. Augustine would be no exception. Priceline is ideal for big cities, but we found that this strategy is a little harder for less populated areas. So when we got our hotel, we weren't quite sure what our 2-star, $32-a-night motel would end up looking like.

Ends up we had a mini fridge (perfect for cheap breakfasts), a microwave (perfect for a couple cheap lunches), and internet service (perfect for searching restaurants and sights as needed) with clean sheets and a pretty clean bathroom. We were pumped! Our adventure was off to a great start!

A photo of our room later on in the trip... a little scattered from unpacking, but you get the idea.

We had left home after work on Friday afternoon. After the 300-mile trek to St. Augustine, we were hungry for dinner. TripAdvisor.com had Cellar 6 listed as the #4 rated restaurant and it was suggested for romantic dinners, so why not?

We each ordered a glass of red wine and then chose two tapas to split between the two of us --
a duck confit flatbread pizza with carmelized pears, goat cheese, and arugula and a crab-stuffed portabella mushroom with remoulade sauce. Both were DELICIOUS! We loved it!

Far and away the coolest menu I've ever seen. The drink menu had backlights like a computer screen so that the dim lighting couldn't hinder your ability to order another glass of wine. Genius!

We passed the Wax Museum on our way back to our car, and when Shaun saw the Yoda in the window... well, take a picture we must.

With all the attractions closed for the evening, we ended up driving to a Publix on our way back to the hotel and grabbing a cup of ice cream for dessert and watching a Netflix movie. Keep posted for the rest of our adventure....