St. Augustine is a tourist town, no question about it. It is carefully set up to part you from your money in many different ways. But, there are many attractions worth seeing, and they've made it very easy for visitors to do so.

Colin took off on another business trip, and we have been taking in the sights, from the sublime to the ridiculous. We've visited the Potter Wax Museum, the Lightner Museum, several very interesting art galleries, the Castillo de San Marcos, and today the Alligator Farm and St. Augustine Light House. The weather has been getting gradually warmer, and today we were comfortable in T-shirts, which made it the perfect day for wandering around looking at alligators and crocodiles and climbing the 219 steps to the top of the lighthouse.

The Lightner Museum is my favorite here. It was built by Flagler as the runner-up hotel (the really Ritzy one across the street is now Flagler College). None-the-less, it housed what at the time was the world's largest indoor swimming pool with a balcony ballroom overlooking it, a Russian bath, and a Turkish bath (one is dry heat and the other is steam, but I can't remember which is which). It was later purchased by Lightner to house his collections of interesting stuff. One of the displays we found particularly enchanting was the collections of odd things, from buttons to match box covers to toasters to fine cut crystal. We also enjoyed the demonstration of the mechanical musical instruments one of which housed a whole little orchestra and played from what were essentially punch card books that folded accordion style.

The Castillo is quite an impressive fort that has never been defeated in battle (unlike Fort Sumter, most of which was rubble). The walls, made of coquina taken from the sea, actually absorbed cannon balls much the way a Styrofoam cup would absorb bee-bees.