Today Kaitlin and I drove up to St. Augustine, FL to attend a friends morning wedding which left us an afternoon to explore around St. Augustine, FL, the oldest city in Florida. While we didn’t have lots of time, we did manage to see Castillo de San Marcos and the Spanish Military Hospital Museum.
Since the post wedding transportation trolly dropped us off at the public paid parking garage, we decided to walk down to Castillo de San Marcos first. The Fort is a US National Park, and admission was $7/person, or if you have an annual pass you can take 4 people in for free. While our schedule didn’t allow for it, the Fort hosts ranger talks, as well as demonstrations of how the cannons were fired during the era of Spanish rule over Florida. I have attended one of the cannon firing events in the past, and it’s pretty neat to watch, but not something I would come back and do again. Other exhibits include wall graffiti, soldier bunks, powder room, etc.
The Spanish Military Hospital Museum is almost more of a tour than really a museum. There aren’t many things to see here, but the tour guides do an excellent job and share lots of knowledge that I don’t think I would have gained walking through a traditional museum, as my attention span for reading displays isn’t the longest. During the tour, topics discussed included: sanitation and it’s importance to the Spanish, how tooth extractions and amputations were handled and why, and medication from the era and how it was bought and sold. All in all I wouldn’t hesitate to suggest someone visiting for a weekend stop by for the tour.
