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)