| Forty miles north of Daytona Beach, Hwy-1 passes
through the heart of St Augustine. Few places in Florida are as immediately
engaging as this old city, with the size and even some of the looks
of a small Mediterranean town. The oldest permanent settlement in the
US, with much from its early days still intact along its narrow streets,
it also offers two alluring lengths of beach just across the bay.
Ponce
de León touched ground here in 1513, but European settlement
began when Spain's Pedro Menéndez de Avilés put
ashore on St Augustine's Day in 1565. Sir Francis Drake's ships
razed
the town in 1586, the first of many battles before Florida
was eventually ceded to Britain in 1763. By then the town was
a major
social and administrative center, soon to be capital of east
Florida. Subsequently, Tallahassee became the capital of a
unified Florida,
and St Augustine's fortunes waned. Expansion largely bypassed
the town - a fact inadvertently facilitating the restoration
program
that has turned this quiet community into a fine historical showcase. Hostels in St
Augustine |
ROOMS USA
