So I made my annual southern migration during the holidays to enjoy the Floridian delights.  Heat, weird animals, Waffle Houses and Florida fun to be had.  What could possibly go wrong???

OK so yeah.  EVERYTHING.  But worry not dear blog reading public.  It was all OK in the end.

Let’s get into the time machine and go way back.  Way way way way back to December 27th 2017.  I know.  It feels like two years ago at this point.  So I depart the relative comfort of Massachusetts for the yet many splendored comfort of Florida.  Get to Orlando, drive to St. Augustine and luxuriate in a condo for seven days.  Heaven.

Except we get to Florida and…. it starts raining buckets.  And then it got bad.  We arrived at the La Terra Condo complex, located at 955 Registry Blvd in St. Augustine, FL to find…. nobody.  Nobody at all.  I mean there was a kind security guard at the gate to the whole thing and inside there was NOBODY.  It was dark and rainy and we were instructed to go to some kind of lock boxes where there were supposed to be instructions.  Spoiler alert — there were no instructions.  NOTHING.

We sat in the car.  We made phone calls.  We called every number available and NOBODY picked up the phone.  The hours wore on and it became clear that NOBODY was going to help us.  We called Expedia, who kinda helped us, but really should not have listed this non-sense condo on their website in the first place.  Finally at about 3am, we checked into a hotel.

The next day we went to some kind of a store front where there was supposed to be a planter with keys in it and THERE WERE NO KEYS.  NOBODY WAS THERE.  We went back to the La Terra to see if anyone was over there to help us.  Turns out the staff at the complex actually refers to them as “La Terrible.”  WOW.  This was not getting off to the best start.

Expedia finally rebooked us into the next available option — a Days Inn next to not one but two sex shops and an outlet mall complex.  All right.

Honestly, I hope people find this entry if they search La Terra St. Augustine.  What a scam that is.  What a scummy scam that is.

Anyway, the visit though continued in pretty nice fashion after the accommodation fiasco.

St. Augustine, Florida is the oldest city in America and has this sort of Florida/Southern charm about it.  It looked like New Orleans, where I haven’t been yet.  It had some Florida oddities which I will detail in an upcoming entry, but most of all it had this colonial, historical charm.

I thought it was going to be really Spanish, like a little Spain but it was just kinda Spain-ish.  Cute, charming but not the odd, animal filled Florida I was accustomed to.

Let’s have a look see at the town itself: