Our first day in St. Augustine was honestly probably my favorite day. It was also Ben's real birthday, poor kid didn't get much special treatment since we had already had a fake birthday for him ;) We spent the morning at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm. After walking by the giant alligator lagoon that had piles of alligators everywhere we watched a little presentation about some Florida Native Reptiles. The presenter had some snakes and we got to watch her feed a turtle, it was super cute. Then we walked the park. One of the highlights was definitely the Winged Bird Rookery. You walk down a path where there are oodles of alligators on each side of you and then the trees are just covered with nesting birds. We also learned about a giant alligator they used to house named Gomek and saw in real life a huge alligator named Maximo- he even snapped his jaws and wow that was a loud sound.
After we had walked the entire park we got to watch them feed rats to alligators. The kids were right up next to the glass so they had a perfect view of them munching down and of the lovely guts that were sometimes left behind. It was pretty gross but also pretty cool.
When we finished up at the Alligator Farm we headed back to our airbnb to eat some lunch and then changed into our suits. It was finally time to play in the ocean- the kids were so excited. The weather was nice and warm so it was perfect for a beach day. We went to Vilano Beach or at least attempted to and I am not quite sure what the name of the beach we ended up on was. The parking lot we found cost nothing and had plenty of spaces. We had to walk on a bridge to get over the road and to the beach, it was covered with locks. The beach was not crowded and we easily found a space for us and our stuff. There were also seashells everywhere. It was really a great beach.
The kids, and even Tyler, spent lots of time playing in the water and jumping over waves. The water was too cold for me so I stuck my feet in for a bit and then happily laid out on my towel and read a book. I got sunburned on my back (probably because I didn't reapply sunscreen when I should have) but I didn't mind because it was nice to feel the sun again. When the kids came back to the shore we all had a lot of fun building sandcastles and trying to protect them from the rising tide. We built some pretty great walls and moats but the ocean was just to strong. I guess that's why they say to build your house upon a rock.
When we were finally all beached out we went back to our airbnb and I put in a frozen pizza (it was Ben's real birthday and his request for dinner was pizza). However, I had bought a cheap frozen pizza and that was a poor choice. It tasted like cardboard. Thankfully the kids didn't mind but Tyler and I did. We ended up turning on a movie for the kids and leaving them to go to downtown St Augustine. Tyler and I had a much better "dinner" there. We had these amazing waffles at Cousteau's Waffle and Milkshake- mine had cinnamon apples and caramel and all sorts of goodness. While we were eating we got serenaded by a young girl playing the voilin- she only knew like 3 songs but still fun. Then we walked the shops and got the kids all some cake pops to celebrate the end of Ben's real birthday.
No comments:
Post a Comment