Petersontravels

Our last stop of this trip was on Amelia Island, a quiet scenic spot directly adjacent to the border with Georgia.  Rather than take the short route we drove along the coast and stopped for lunch in Jacksonville Beach, yet another beautiful spot.

Taking the coastal route did require us to take a short ferry ride across the St. John’s River onto Amelia Island.

I was amazed at how many pelicans were nesting at the ferry terminal.

We drove another 30 minutes to the north end of Amelia Island and checked into the Elizabeth Pointe Hotel.  We stayed in the small building to the right of the main hotel.

Which had an excellent view of the beach.

We took a short hike before sunset on the Egan’s Creek Greenway Trail, only a mile from the hotel.  Beautiful spot!  There are sometimes alligators here, but we only saw birds.

It looked like it would make a great spot for kayaking!

The next day we spent some time lounging on the beach in front of the hotel.

The beach was mostly empty this time of year, but the weather was great!

We found another giant chair on the beach at a restaurant adjacent to our hotel.  These chairs seem to be a trend throughout the areas we’ve visited in Florida.

That afternoon we had a boat tour of the Amelia River that departed out of the little and very cute town of Fernandina.  First we cruised by the industrial port area, which even has a container crane, albeit a quite small one by today’s standards.

This facility makes cellulose material for cardboard boxes, and is the largest employer on Amelia Island.

Our tour guide mentioned this house was featured in the movie Pipi Longstocking, which I remember seeing as a child.  Terrible film!

At the entrance to the harbor is Fort Clinch, which was an important fort during the Civil War.  Today the big attraction here is hunting for shark teeth along the beach.  There are even massive prehistoric Megalodon teeth found here!

We cruised over to the Georgia side of the border and along Cumberland Island National Seashore, a mostly empty island known for their wild horses.

This island only has a few roads, so it’s a great spot to visit by boat.

There is plenty of wildlife, including alligators!

As well as about a dozen bottle-nose dolphins that seemed to follow our boat around.  The kids onboard were very excited!

Back in Fernandina Beach we walked around the beautiful old town, and took a shot of the oldest bar in Florida.  The bar exterior also features in the terrible Pipi Longstocking movie.

One last sunset from our patio.

A great trip overall, and we were surprised with how much we loved Florida.  We expected the weather to be more humid than it was and to have occasional rain, but we only had one morning of showers.  The people here are super friendly, and the beaches are gorgeous!

I’m including one photo from after we got back home.  Our dog Corky loves to howl at the guitar, and I caught him in front of the TV letting it rip!

Coming up next for us is a South American cruise in January.  Until then, happy holidays and thanks as always for reading!

 

Our guide on our first day advised that Flagler College offers tours of the main building that are led by students, so we booked this on our last day.  We were a bit early so I took a few photos of the impressive former Ponce de Leon Hotel, built by Henry Flagler in 1888.  Flagler made his riches as the co-founder of Standard Oil (along with John D. Rockefeller).  That’s Henry right up front!

This is the ceiling inside the lobby known as the rotunda.  It was like something you’d see in a cathedral!  Flagler spared no expense building the hotel, including having the place wired for electricity.  This was one of the first buildings to do so, all under the supervision of his friend Thomas Edison.  This was such a new technology that that the hotel had staff that would go up to guests rooms and turn the lights on and off, as the guests were afraid they were going to get electrocuted by the light switch.

When Henry’s guests arrived the men went to check in and pay their bill, while the ladies were taken to the gorgeous Women’s Grand Parlor, a reception area where they were served tea and crumpets.  The chandeliers throughout the hotel were created by the famous Louis Comfort Tiffany, and his work here was instrumental on his path to fame.

Thomas Edison also installed this massive clock for Flagler.  It’s unfortunately no longer working, and they don’t want to try and fix it and take a chance on destroying the intricately carved white onyx surrounding it.

We were then taken to the Dining Room which served 300 seated guests, each table with their own waiter.  The more than 40 windows in this room were all created by Tiffany.  The exterior of these windows are all covered by bulletproof glass to ensure they aren’t damaged by a hurricane.

Tiffany also created this unique chandelier in the middle of the dining room, as well as the sconces that line the wall around the room.  This is now the dining room for the students at Flagler.

The final part of our tour was in the outside courtyard.  These ornate depressions in the wall of the courtyard were filled with water and served as ashtrays.

This fountain in the middle of the courtyard is also a working sundial, and the frogs that surround the fountain work as the hour markers.  The four turtles in the middle represent the seasons.

This statue is fairly new, depicting Henry with his beloved German spitz, Delos, which was constantly by his side in his later years.  Anybody who loves dogs can’t be bad!

One last look of the courtyard.  Be warned, this is a favorite spot for Instagrammers!

Directly across the street from Flagler College is Henry Flagler’s second hotel, which at the time was known as Hotel Alcazar.  It now houses the Lightner Museum, and while we didn’t visit the museum, we visited the site of Flagler’s giant swimming pool, which he completed in 1889.

This photo shows what the pool looked like in 1889.  At that time it was the largest indoor swimming pool in the world!  More than just for swimming, the pool was used for entertainment, with high dives, swings hanging from the rafters, water polo and bathtub races.

This bell on the grounds of our hotel was used in January of 1863 to call people to this site to announce President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, freeing all of the slaves.

This beautiful building is The Treasury, which opened in 1927 as the area’s central bank.  It is now used primarily as a wedding venue.

This is the entrance of the previously mentioned oldest street in America, Aviles Street, taken from the central plaza.

On our last night we walked to a restaurant in the Lincolnville Historic District, where many civil rights demonstrations were held in 1964.  This house is owned by Cora Tyson, who hosted Martin Luther King several times when he stayed in St. Augustine, and made it his local headquarters.  The home was once firebombed and King himself was assaulted here.  Cora Tyson is 102 years old and still lives here.

Up next, our final stop on Amelia Island, Florida.