St. Augustine -- Finale

On our last morning in St. Augustine, we made a couple quick stops before heading back home. Stop #1: Whetstone Chocolate Factory for a passion fruit and mango macaron.

Stop #2

We had planned to celebrate St. Patrick's Day by eating lunch at Meehan's Irish Pub, but my mental calendar was a day off -- so instead we ate on March 16th. The Irish clam chowder and Guinness Beef Sliders were delicious!

Stop #3: Crucial Coffee Cafe, a little coffee shop that had high ratings on TripAdvisor.com. My frilly coffee-drinking self chose a Snickers Cappuccino, and it was pretty good! :)

Stop #4: the Love Tree cafe.

This tree was unlike anything I had ever seen, and a perfect illustration for a quote I read recently (see below). After our photo, we loaded up the car and left to drive back home, refueled by yet another weekend adventure that we had the privilege to share together.

"Love is a temporary madness.

It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides.

And when it subsides, you have to make a decision.

You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part.

Because this is what love is.

Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion.

That is just being "in love" which any of us can convince ourselves we are.

Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away,

and this is both an art and a fortunate accident.

Your mother and I had it;

we had roots that grew towards each other underground,

and when all the pretty blossoms had fallen from our branches,

we found that we were one tree and not two."

-- Louis de Bernieres (Captain Corelli's Mandolin)

St. Augustine -- Part 3

Tuesday morning started with Shaun's part of the trip -- the World Golf Hall of Fame. It was a great museum about the history of the game and showcasing those proud few who've earned the honors of being inducted. The tickets included a temporary exhibit on Bob Hope, which was my favorite part of the museum.

Like a kid in a candy store -- Inside the gift shop

Testing out the putters on the astroturf green

The museum had a simulation of the famous Swilcan Bridge from the oldest golf course in the world -- St. Andrews in Scotland. Maybe someday, Shaun, maybe someday...

The evolution of the putter.

The top level of the museum held one of each of the majors' tournament trophies. My favorite part of the room, however, was the ceiling. 126 names of inductees spiraled in the shape of the perfect golf swing on the floor, and suspended above them were crystals in the same.

The tickets

included playing a virtual hole of golf as well as a challenge shot, modeled after hole-17 at the Tournament Players Club at Sawgrass. I gave Shaun my shot as well so he had a chance at landing 2 on the green for a poster. And get a poster he did! Yay, Shaun!

We played an 18-hole putting course after the museum. Shaun gave me an incredibly generous handicap, but I needed every bit of it!

With his gifting of a stroke allowance on every other hole, I won by a stroke!

After Shaun came down from his golfer high, it was back to old St. Augustine to see what else the city had to offer....

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This is the Oldest House Museum that dates back to the early 1700s. While tempted to tour it, we decided to just take a quick picture instead. (All the separate museum fees can really mess with your budget....)

We went to the St. Augustine Pirate and Treasure Museum later that afternoon when we came back from the golf museum. Newly reopened from it's original home in Key West, the museum was founded by Pat Croce, an avid pirate fan since he was a boy. His collection in the museum was extensive and there were so many Disney-esque animatronics and interactive features that kept us busy for quite a while! Unfortunately, there were no pictures allowed in the museum, so we had to settle with just this one of us in the stocks. Yo ho ho!

Ahh... dinner at a cute little French bistro downtown for a relaxingly slow meal.

Baguette slices and cups of a creamy mushroom/cauliflower soup compliments of the chef! The soup was amazing!

Escargots! I almost pulled a "Pretty Woman moment," but thankfully the waiter came over and showed me how to hold the shell in the tongs so it doesn't go flying across the room. :)

Coq au Vin and a seafood bisque/risotto like meal.... both were so good!

The day ended with some dark chocolate covered coconut and almond bark from Savannah's Sweets, so you know it was a good day!

St. Augustine -- Part 2

Our first morning in St. Augustine started with it's largest landmark -- the Castillo de San Marcos. It is the oldest fort in America (construction began in 1672) and was used as recently as World War II to hold war deserters. It's made of coquina shell rock, which is similar to limestone. The coquina held up remarkably well to artillery and cannons, absorbing the shock. This was part of the reason the fort was never defeated, despite some serious siege attempts, one lasting two months!

Enjoying the breeze by the cannons.

A view looking down into the fort from the top. Can you imagine 1,500 people and their livestock living in here during a 2-month siege?

Spying on intruders

St. Augustine also is home to the oldest wooden one-room schoolhouse, so of course I had to take a picture outside of it! But we opted to eat popcorn and popsicles instead of paying the entrance fee to see it.

Walking around a cute tourist town like St. Augustine provides for lots of quirky shops to peek in. One of our favorites was Pop'N Off, a gourmet popcorn shop. They had dozens of flavors (and ship from their website!) and many to sample. We tried dill pickle, strawberries and champagne, and peanut butter and jelly, but eventually settled on buying a bag of half tiramisu and half dark chocolate caramel. Yum!!


Another cute find was The Hyppo, a gourmet popsicle shop. They made popsicles from all-fresh, mostly-local ingredients. They had crazier flavors like pineapple cilantro and cucumber lemon mint. Mine was mango champagne (SO good!) and Shaun ordered a key lime (also SO good).

Side note: Shaun wore an Auburn shirt, and in the Hyppo as well as from a passing car, we got two "War Eagles" hollered at us! (I know Caroline and Ashley would be proud! War Eagle!)

We finished our evening with St. Augustine's number one attraction, according to TripAdvisor.com -- the History, Mystery, Mayhem, and Murder guided walking tour. It sounded a little more appealing than your typical ghost tour. We followed our guide Dion around the town learning about pirates, scandals, massacres, and exploding corpses (no lie!) that color St. Augustine's past. This was one of the cemeteries we stopped by.

Dion in front of an inn that used to be a funeral parlor in the early 1900s.

Stay tuned for Part 3 -- Shaun's favorite day! :)

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....

Road Trippin'

On this day a year ago, Shaun and I were in the midst of our best summer ever! We had just been married and were spending two months traveling and honeymooning. The perk of spending four grueling years at the Air Force Academy, is that upon graduation, you then have 60 days of leave... free and unattached to do anything you want. Well, Shaun did have one attachment... ME! :) We were married on Day 3, so we technically only had 57 days of honeymoon, but I'm not complaining.


For 8 of the final days of June, we went on a road trip from Colorado Springs through Utah and Nevada to LA for a couple days, then back around via Pheonix, El Paso, and Fort Worth before coming back to Colorful Colorado. We were able to see some of the gorgeous landscapes in the West, but better yet, we spent time with family and friends on each stop!




Here are some snapshots from our trip:

We drove through the Colorado National Monument to start our road trip. It was worth the extra driving time it took. It made us sad to think that we were saying good-bye to such a beautiful state soon.

Simply breathtaking in person!

The park's famous coke ovens rock formation.

You can see just how big and pretty this national park is.

After 10ish hours on the road, we got a speeding ticket only half a mile from our hotel.

Parowan, Utah... you are dead to us.

We didn't spend much time in Vegas, only enough to fill the car with gas and fill our tummies with some In-N-Out! Mmm!

With long-time O'Bryant family friends, Tim and Janet Simonec.
We had such a great time with them in LA!

Hollywood!

Eating lunch at the Farmer's Market, we saw Matthew Gray Gubler from the TV show Criminal Minds, so we asked to take a picture with him.

Shopping on Rodeo Drive
(Don't worry, we walked away empty-handed. Though the 12-carat diamond ring we saw in Cartier's window was tempting...)

Venice, California

The trip to Fort Worth was to see my cousin Jeremy's wedding to his wife, Kaci.
This is him walking my Aunt Robin down the aisle.

Some rural Texan scenery on our way back to Colorado.