UPDATE from Becky Buller with Valerie Smith & Liberty Pike in Florida!

20110319

UPDATE from Becky Buller with Valerie Smith & Liberty Pike in Florida!

Becky Buller

Becky Buller writes again, and she says she knows she's late but hopes you will read anyway.....

...And a happy St. Patty's Day to ye all! I be wearing green earrings today soes nobody can be pinchin' me. Forgot me shamrock socks on the bus. Drat and curses!

After the seafood festival last weekend, we stayed in St. Augustine for a couple days of exploring. Monday we took the nifty green and orange trolly tour around the city learning all sorts of fun facts about the United States' oldest continually inhabited city.

Here are a few of them: The city was built in such a way that the sea breezes could come up through the streets and cool the town. The British would shoot the Castillo de San Marcos (the old Spanish fort completed in the 1690s) with cannonballs and the Spanish would come out and night and repaint it so it didn't look like it had been hit, making the British think the place healed itself. (Tee-hee!) And that those who fish around the seafood restaurant on the pier in the bay are cheating. (Because the patrons throw bread down to the fish so they hang around there...)

We dined at the Columbia Restaurant, on the recommendation of IBMA's Nancy Cardwell and our buddy Turtle Bob. The 1905 salad, the Cuban sandwiches, the black bean and rice soup...everything was so good!

St. Augustine Snake Handlers

And The Hyppo on Hypolita Street has wonderful popsicles. I had the pineapple/cilantro, Shane said the watermelon tasted like real watermelon and Dave said the snozberries tasted like real snozeberris. Val was brave and tried the strawberry/basil.

David and I toured the Castillo. Not far from there, we ran into a couple St. Augustine snake-handlers. (They actually do snake rescue.) We opted to take a picture of them even though they graciously offered to take our photos holding the snakes. (I think one of them was named "Fluffy.")

Love stinks! Cupid breaks his bow
at the Lightner Musuem

Tuesday we visited in the Lightner Museum. Otto Lightner was a collector of other people's collection. (Does that mean a pack rat who bought other rats' packs?) It was a very interesting hodgepodge of stuff, from buttons to cigar wrappers, the mummy of an Egyptian baby to a bronze bust of Lincoln, stained glasses thises and thats by Tiffany to a variety of toasters. I particularly enjoyed the chunk of meteorite, the electro-static shock therapy machine from 1880 something that used to be in the Hotel Alcazar (now the Lightner Museum) as an amusement and the gigantic doll house.

Thanks to our friends from the St. Augustine Lions Club for supper, music and conversation Tuesday night.

We Went Fishing!

I tried to get J. Gregory to stop at a Wal-Mart while en route to Auburndale yesterday, but he wasn't up for it. We needed more flowers for the bus as the carnations our friend Judy got us at the beginning of the tour two weeks ago were finally starting to wither. The bus just isn't as homey without them!

Had a pickin' last night here in Auburndale and some great blackened chicken. Today we got some rehearsing in for the gigs this weekend. After a yummy spaghetti supper, we went down to the dock for some fishing. Shane had to help Val and I as we kept getting our line tangled. David finally ended up going to a different dock completely and then gave up the fishing for bull frog hunting. The fish weren't biting, but the skeeters were, so Val went back in to watch American Idol and Shane and I went back to the house to compare capos, BMF vs McKinney vs Elliot. If you'd like to weigh in on the subject, visit my Facebook page.

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