Finally in Florida!

St Augustine was our first stop in Florida, which is the last state we will be visiting here in the USA before our return home! It's yet another quaint picturesque historical town(!) but different from Savannah or Charleston in that there is much more of a Spanish influence here, particularly in the architecture and buildings - some of which are spectacular! One of our favourite buildings was the local college - Flagler College. I reckon it would be a pleasure to study there every day (although I am sure the students who do go there don't appreciate it at all!) St Augustine is also the oldest city in the whole of the USA, which the locals are very proud of! It's also very easy to walk around without needing a car which was good news for us! We enjoyed strolling down George Street which is full of all the old style buildings and shops. It's very touristy but still a 'must see'! A guy working at an Italian restaurant on the street came out a couple of times when we were there with a freshly cooked hot pizza and started handing out free samples - Mmmmm - we were first in the queue! We stopped for a look at the oldest schoolhouse in the USA - Hmmm, they can't have had that many pupils attending there as it's a tiny place! The waterfront was also a good place to wander round, either looking round the old fort or looking out for dolphins near the bridge! We were lucky enough to see them close up on a few occasions which was fabulous! We are staying in a place called Anastasia Island, which is just over the bridge from the main historical district so every time we went over the bridge we looked out for them! There seemed to be a family of them with mum and baby swimming together side by side and coming up for air quite often and then daddy dolphin on his own swimming around! Couldn't get a photo of them as they were too fast but it was great to see them at such close quarters! Now if you're travelling in the USA in October you just can't fail to notice that it's Halloween season! Halloween fever was well into overdrive by the time we arrived here in St. Augustine. And Carol (if you're reading this!) if you thought that was a lot of pumpkins in our last blog on Savannah, then have a look at this photo of CK inspecting a whole street full of them! I have never seen so many of them all together in one place! Another reason we picked St Augustine for our first stop in Florida was that it's only an hour and a half's drive away from the Kennedy Space Centre! We hired a car for a day and drove down there to Cape Canavarel. It took us a bit longer to get there as you have to drive over a bridge onto an island and just as we got there they were raising the bridge to let some boats through and we seemed to be waiting for ages! Anyway, finally we arrived and if we had realised there was so much to see we would have set off earlier. It's a fascinating place to visit and they even had a retired NASA engineer there, sitting on a stool, ready to answer any questions you might have! Now what kind of question do you ask a NASA engineer?! My mind immediately went blank! Fearing that a Bridget Jones style moment might be coming on where I might blurt out something like "Excuse me but where are the toilets?!" I gave him a wide berth! Now, being as my knowledge of rockets, launch pads and the like is quite limited to say the least, I am going to pass you over to my technical assistant and respected colleague (and future astronaut!) CK who will fill you all in on exactly what we were looking at! Over to you CK! Well what can I say except that we had a "Spacetastic" day at the Kennedy Space Centre! What a thrill to see a real rocket on the launch pad awaiting the countdown - you may have seen the Ares1-X test rocket on the news lately and the actual countdown begins Tues 27th October! (Click the photo to see it bigger!). The NASA building you can see is where they construct all of their rockets, and then the finished rocket goes on a "crawler" to reach 1 of 3 launch pads, and that 4 mile journey can take about 8 hours! The space shuttle was on another launch pad, so it was pretty exciting stuff! There are some amazing displays at the KSC-my favourites were the real 363 foot moon rocket, and the real space shuttle, and imagining them both hurtling through space at 17,500 miles per hour makes you realise what a dangerous job the astronauts really have! They also construct the International Space Station there, train their astronauts there, have a rare collection of space artifacts (including a piece of moon rock which you are allowed to touch), lots of hands on displays, and you can even experience the effects of a real Shuttle launch! As I get really bad motion sickness, we went to see the IMAX 3D movie about walking on the moon instead! We loved our day at the KSC and we even saw several alligators in the waters there-apparently there are around 3000 of them within the grounds! Space travel is so fascinating, and the KSC leaves you full of wonder and amazement at the achievements of man in space although as we all know, there is so much more to learn about our universe and its all out there waiting for us! Next stop is Fort Lauderdale where we are going to visit the Everglades and drive down to Key West (yes, all the way down to the very tip!) Should be a fabulous drive - we can't wait!