Florida: St. Augustine - Ximenez-Fatio House

Day 304
No Boat Travel

We saved money on the Old Town Trolley Tour through St. Augustine by buying the tickets yesterday as "next-day tickets". Clark showed little enthusiasm for what he saw as a tourist trap, but he appeased me and bought the tickets anyway. As we tootled around town in the trolley, we saw some sights we had found on our own and discovered a few we did not know about previously. Clark seemed to think we wasted our money. I enjoyed the tour, and my feet appreciated the break from continuous use over the past few days.

Our tour guide on the trolley, "Dread Pirate" Robert, spewed information non-stop from the time we got on the trolley until the time we exited. Other than his dread-pirate accent that grated on my nerves each time he used it, he mostly provided facts and added little humor to his dialogue. I took notes as best I could as we passed attraction after attraction.

I learned the following from the trolley tour ...

1) The shape of the Castillo de San Marcos fort matches the pattern on the Spanish Cross of Burgundy flag. The walls of the fort were painted white and the towers in the four corners were red so that no one approaching the fort would mistake it for anything other than a Spanish holding.

Cross of Burgundy Spanish Flag
Still used at Castillo de San Marcos Fort

2) A castle-shaped building, known as Warden Castle, was a private home in St. Augustine until it was purchased to house the first ever Ripley's Believe It or Not museum.

Warden Castle -
now Ripley's Believe It or Not museum

3) The exact replica of Michelangelo's Statue of David on the Warden Castle estate caused numerous road accidents due to the unclad nature of the statue. Finally a tarp was purchased and draped on the statue in the form of a toga to give the statue privacy until the hedge grew high enough to give him dignity.

Michelangelo's  Statue of David
now protected from voyeurs by tall hedge

4) The "Old Senator" is an ancient oak tree approximately 659 years old. According to the tour guide the tree is just like a senator ... "old as dirt, shady, and crooked."

Ancient "Old Senator" Oak Tree

5) The narrow streets leading into the center of town served two purposes for the Spanish citizens. They funneled the sea breeze into town to keep it cooler in the summer. They also acted as a means of defending the town as the streets were too narrow for an attacking force to march down.

6) The collection of Tiffany glass windows we saw at Flagler College yesterday are valued at $130 million!

7) The Lightner Museum is housed in a building originally purchased by Lightner to serve as a storage unit for all the antiques and relics he had purchased over time. Lightner was known as the collector of collections as he bought other people's collections. Eventually he decided he should display his collections and opened the building to the public as a museum.

Lightner's "Storage" Unit for his collections

We actually started our tour in the middle since the marina is near stop 16. When we got to stop 1, we exited the trolley to view the complimentary History Museum on the site of the "Old Jail". The Old Jail was designed and built by Henry Flagler. The three-story building was so impressive tourists showed up at the door inquiring about accommodations as they thought it was a hotel.

Sheriff Statue at the "Old Jail"

Statues of Prisoners at the Old Jail

The Gallows!

The history museum was worth just about what we paid for the privilege of viewing it ... nothing! We boarded the trolley and stayed on until we returned to stop 16. All-in-all I enjoyed it. I was glad, however, that we had not paid full price for the ride.

In the afternoon we visited the Ximenez-Fatio house as we had heard it provided a better tour than the "Oldest House". As with Flagler College, we got extremely lucky again on timing. We arrived about 2:02 and the tours start on the hour. The person at the desk told us to catch the tour and pay afterwards; otherwise we would have to come back at 3:00 for the next tour. Phew! What luck!

The tour guide gave us a good description of the Spanish home of Ximenez that became a boarding house under Fatio ownership. He went into a lot of detail describing how the "barn-like", open Spanish structure of the original Coquina-constructed home was modified by Fatio to improve the house design to allow it to be used as a boarding house. For example, flooring was modified to wood floors from concrete, and extra walls were put in place to divide the large open-spaced building into a number of smaller rooms.

Ximenez-Fatio House
(main house in left wing and rooms for patrons in right wing)

Ximenez-Fatio House
including the cook house on far right

Rooms in the house displayed personal items that would have been used by the patrons of each room. One room showed the belongings of a sea captain, the next those of a doctor, and the last those of a naturalist who would have come to the area to collect plant and animal samples from unexplored Florida.

Items in Sea Captain's Room

The Dining Room of the Boarding House

Chamber Pot built into a seat to make a Toilet Seat
the lid folds down to hide the "pot"

Patrons of the boarding house bathed once per week using either the "hat" bath or the "hip" bath. For a hat bath the person stood on the red "hat" and water was poured over him or her. The hip bath looked just about big enough to sit in with ones feet hanging over the sides. Neither option seemed particularly wonderful.

Red object on the wall is a "Hat" Bath

A "hip" bath in a patron's room

 After touring the rooms used by patrons, we visited the cook house and laundry building.

Cook House

The laundry building had to be completely rebuilt as no work had been done to preserve it over the years. It is the only non-original building on the property.

Laundry House

After three full days of sightseeing my feet needed a rest. When we completed the tour, we left the boarding house exhibit and went back to the boat and hung out for several hours - long enough for me to complete yesterday's blog entry and post it. Once that was done it was time for dinner. I convinced Clark that we should go out for dinner, and he agreed to that proposal.

We tried to find a restaurant where we could get a nice seafood dinner. However, none of the menus we found at any of the advertised seafood restaurants grabbed our fancy. I had almost given up on finding something I really wanted to eat when Clark suggested we go to Meehan's Irish Pub for dinner. I told Clark that I should have the menu memorized given the amount of time I stood in front of the place yesterday waiting for him to retrieve the coat that could not be found. I did remember they had at least one thing I wanted and that was good enough to convince us to go check it out.

Voila! We each found something we wanted to eat. Clark decided on the Cottage Pie. and I wanted the Steak and Stout. Neither of us was disappointed by our menu selection. I found the food to be good and filling. Clark, on the other hand, said he needed something to finish off the meal. Once again we went in search of an ice cream shop. The one Clark wanted to try was closed, so we ended up at Kilwins yet again. Clark got a cone, but I passed as I did not think my stomach could hold any more food.

I told Clark I was too tired to work on my blog tonight, but as he started surfing the television for the weather and news, I started working on my blog and eventually found myself completing today's entry. Yay!!

We leave here in the morning and have not fully decided where we will stay tomorrow night. Given that, we may or may not have WiFi, so that helped to motivate me to get caught up on blog updates.