Picking up where we left off (Florida Day 5)

The crisis made it hard for me to blog about the rest of our trip, I've been so consumed by it for so long, and we're not out of the woods yet, not even close, but as I've looked at pictures and talked to friends recently, I've been thinking it'd be good for me to get writing about it again.  So, I'm going to pick up where we left off...

SUNDAY!

We woke up pretty lazy on Sunday, not until about 11 am, because we stayed up so late the night before (just because we were on vacation).  I had already planned the day's events, but hadn't told A about them yet.  About 45 miles down A1A from where we were staying, is St. Augustine, the oldest city in the United States.  There, is Castillo de san Marcos National Monument, which is an AMAZING fort used by the Spanish conquistadores over 450 years ago.  I'd been there twice before, when I was seven and when I was thirteen, but I hadn't understood its historical significance.  I'm sure A didn't either, but I wanted to take her for a cultural experience.  We both had a blast, as the fort is VERY cool.

My girl on the drawbridge

You already know she's all about princesses and fairy tales, so taking her to a REAL castle was way cool.  She even joined me in my goofy antics... like pretending to be prisoners in the room they used to hold native Americans captive...

I was TRYING to make a terrified face...

And this girl... well, she just can't look unhappy on command.

And then, on the roof, there was the cannon shot I convinced her to take... can you tell we were having too much fun to effectively act scared?

And then there were the obligatory cute (or attempted cute) pictures of both of us.

We were trying to get ourselves and the background of the fort in the picture...

I love how excited she looks in this one.

After the fort, we headed to downtown St. Augustine, where there are some of the cutest, most unique little shops I have ever seen.  When I was seven and my parents took me there, I learned what 'made out like a bandit' meant.  A learned the same thing.  I got her the cutest sling for her water bottle (and another one to bring home to M), each of the girls a box of worry dolls (and I explained to A what they were for... I'm feeling so glad I did that now.  They were in the bag I sent with her when she left me)... then we treated ourselves to ice cream, which was DELICIOUS...

See me rocking my free sunglasses on top my head there?  Who needs $500 sunglasses, these ones worked great!

Then I found something that meant so much to me... you see, ever since my dear friend Angie died nearly a year ago, I've been looking for a dolphin necklace... dolphins were her favorite... and it had to be perfect.  I'm allergic to almost everything, so it couldn't just be something cheap.  It had to be special.  

I found it.  And orange was her favorite color.

After our fun downtown, we headed to the beach at St. Augustine.  On the way, we got a special treat seeing the drawbridge go up!  A was completely flabbergasted.

Shortly after that we arrived at the public beach, which is really nice and has a lot more shells than where we were staying.  A had a blast looking for them.

She was still a little scared of the waves so she mostly stayed in the surf up to her ankles.  It was evening by then so the beach was pretty quiet.  After that we hit up a McDonald's for dinner and headed back to the condo.  We tried to go to bed a little earlier, because we already had plans for the next morning...