St Augustine - missing a mouse?

Our first day in St Augustine was something of a disappointment, if we're honest.  

They tell you that it's 'ancient', but what they don't tell you is that Disney has forced itself into the cracks between its 450-year-old stones.

We won't go on, but somehow the real history of this place has been supplanted by an anodyne and fake face which finds expression in several Ripley's Believe it or not exhibits and signs straight out of Hogwarts.

Adding an additional p and an e to shop really DOESN'T make it old.

Adding to our disappointment was a message that the rocket launch we were booked in to see was postponed until Saturday, meaning we're unlikely to see it. Over dinner at the excellent Ice Plant, we consoled ourselves with cocktails and waxed philosophical (as you do over cocktails), and planned today.

Which was so much more satisfying. Today, we decided to stick to museums and sights which didn't mind the inonvenience of being old.  Like the Cathedral, which was pretty:

Angels playing the latest Ed Sheeran

And like Government House, whose exhibition on tribal canoes was more interesting than you might imagine, and the strange Villa Zorayda whose exhibits singly would have been lovely but massed together were a bit overwhelming.  It wasn't helped by an audio tour where the man narrating sounded like he was reading with his finger underneath the words....

And we also visited the sumptuous Flagler College. We'll pass over the man himself whose third wife was 37 years his junior and who married her only because he managed to pass a law which allowed him to divorce his second wife who he threw in a mental institution....

But the college is a glorious place, filled with Tiffany glass and originally designed as an hotel for wealthy northern Americans.  

St Helena's was never like this

 Tiffany glass overlooks the sandwiches and fries served for lunch

Welcome to the Hotel California?

Our final stop today was the wonderful St Augustine Distillery. 

This gem of place has taken on the Government and won the right to sell it's locally produced rum, vodka and gin. It's locally owned and its investors were local people.  It uses locally grown sugar cane to produce its spirits, and its aim is to continue to support and work with local farmers. 

By the people, for the people.

Bourbon, in new white oak casks, fermenting nicely.

It is developing a new rum and has produced versions in September (sold out in six days) October (sold out in two weeks) and the next issue is on 7 November. The distillery will take feedback and cogitate before it brings out its final version in 2016.

We tried some of the samples (well, it would have been churlish not to) before walking back to our B&B. We think the line was straight but we weren't that bothered if it wasn't.....

Tomorrow, we hit the road and drive to Jekyll Island.

Houston, we have a problem....

"Houston, we have a problem."

"Copy that. Please give details."

"We're right out of brain power. We're having trouble computing distances, time and size."

"We copy. You're having trouble imagining it all?"

"Affirmative. We're not sure our brains can stretch that far."

"Copy that and continue. Happens to everyone."

Today, we allowed ourselves to get swept away by the majesty of it all.  The numbers which run into trillion billions, the distances which actually seem more like forever.  At the end of the last IMAX film on the Hubble Telescope, we simply gave up trying to add up the number of zeros and just gawped at the pretty pictures. Stuff like this...

Credit: ESA/Hubble

Not that comedy is ever far away from the sublime.  Take Art Meraz, introduced as 'a real life rocket scientist!' (never forget the exclamation mark).

It ain't rocket science.  Honest.

This was a chap from the United Launch Alliance, a commercial organisation which is throwing into orbit a GPS system for the US Air Force..  He came, he told us, to spread the word about the commercial organisations now going into space.  His company will be involved in the exploration of Pluto.

Sadly, whatever skills Art may have as a launch operations avionics engineer, he could certainly use some coaching on presentation skills.  He shows the extreme danger of taking a passion and then making a living from it - it becomes beset with administration, budgets and the humdrum.  Certainly, his monotone delivery soon scattered his audience, and us with it.

But we played about today, attempting to land Curiosity-like crafts on Mars without crashing (done by Karen at the third attempt - a bit like her driving test), listening in to other people's tours, and having lunch with an astronaut - or rather listening to an astronaut after lunch.  It was a good lunch, and a good presentation from Jack Lousma, one of the few pilots to have flown SkyLab and the Space Shuttle missions.  He had just the right amount of self-deprecation with a lot of stunning footage.

"An Irishman, a Scotsman and an American get into the Space Shuttle...."

Karen - keen as ever - asked a question about how you get to go on multiple flights and Jack's response was - "Don't screw up." 

At the end of the session, when people were scrabbling to get photos taken with Jack, we headed for Gratia Kay, his wife of 47 years. When asked if she ever wished her husband had had another job, she said "Oh no. It was great that he did what he wanted to - the only thing I ever cared about was when he might not get to do it all." We thought she was pretty cool.

Dishing the dirt with the lovely Gratia. 

Tonight we ate dinner at the splendid Dixie Crossroads, a seafood place in Titusville.  Titusville, be assured, hasn't much to recommend it, although we did stop off at possibly the prettiest and therefore most photographed place - Space View Park.

There's a storm coming in....

Our dinner was wonderful, and we thought it worth sharing some of the unexpected pleasures of the place with you. So, who would have thought a place which looked like this....

Casting couch for Finding Nemo

....could have toilets like this.

The slaves with the fans are just out of shot.

Of stars and space, and time

When I was a little girl, my grandmother had a children's encyclopaedia. It was bound in red fabric, and under under the section of 'The World" there was a double page spread about space travel.  It showed an artist's impression of the view of the earth from the moon.

I was completely entranced by this and have been fascinated by stars and stories ever since.  To visit the Kennedy Space Station is a perfect way to combine the two.

Karen being very un-British....

Being an organised sort, Fiona had booked us on two main activities - the Special Interest Tour                              and lunch with an astronaut.  The tours seem to be run by people who either do, or did, work at the Space Centre. This gives their narrative a passion and an authenticity which is hard to beat.

However, it also gives the audience - ready or not - a massive amount of data. Our tour guide, Bill, spouted more acronyms in five minutes than I heard in five months of project management meetings, and we both wondered whether two thirds of the information might be cut from his 90-minute tour to improve his communication with an increasingly bewildered, multi-national audience. 

We did see some very cool kit, nevertheless. At one stage we wondered whether we'd been parachuted into an episode of Thunderbirds, with launch pads, crawler transporters and vehicle assembly buildings.  

Here's one of the crawler transporters, and for those not familiar with Gerry Anderson, let us reassure you that this looks just like one of the pods from Thunderbird 2.

Crawler transporters - perfect for that Monday morning commute on the M25

We watched the countdown to the launch of one of the Apollo missions where the control room was just as it had been during the launch. Even though we knew the ending, there was an enormous amount of tension in the auditorium as the countdown continued.

"Houston, we've lost Tom Hanks. I repeat, we've lost Tom Hanks."

The Space Centre also made us feel - well, a bit humbled. I mean, just look at the size of these engines.

Now that's a hairdryer....

And it must be really special to work for an enterprise which - on the face of it, certainly - is so....noble.

I don't want to get all philosophical - after all, this is a holiday blog - but with something so huge, which requires so much courage to undertake, which has such potential consequences for the rest of the world (or humankind, as the KSC likes to call it) - well, I spent most of the day with a lump in my throat, thinking of that encyclopaedia illustration and wondering what I might have done if I'd been any use at all at maths. 

The Space Centre talks a great deal about inspiring people to do the impossible.  One of the sights which did bring me back to my comfortable, cynical self was the inscription about the International Space Centre which was something like, 'a triumph of engineering and international co-operation'.

I found myself thinking - well, if this is true, why only on this?  Why not also about feeding the world, reducing climate change, preventing war, reducing poverty? I know that life isn't a Coca-Cola commercial, but if we're so bright we can put a man on the moon, land on an asteroid, go to Mars - why are the people-focused endeavours left untouched?

It doesn't help, I suppose, that the commercial space partners for NASA also produce some of the nastiest weapons in the world and it's not in their interests to have world peace. The US, despite coming in peace (apparently), abstained from the 2014 UN Resolution on preventing an arms race in outer space. 

But before this gets all party-political (perhaps another of the reasons?), here are some more pictures from our day, including one of Snoopy the Astronaut.  Obviously.

Karen's actual fingers, touching some moon rock.

Rather battered landing module

Having finally pushed all the kids out of the way, Karen sat at the controls of the Columbia Space Shuttle

Fiona in front of the Atlantis Space Shuttle.  Which looks as though it's padded.

And finally.... the piece de resistance - Snoopy in a spacesuit.

Florida marshes, the odd bird and shy aligators

Arriving in Florida, we Brits had a shock. Rain we can cope with - well, ours is a 'green and pleasant land' after all - but hot? 

We picked up the car (and went through the usual additional cost/information/dire warnings about not having the right insurance..... although to be fair to Hertz, they didn't bat an eyelid at adding Karen as a spouse and extra driver) and then cautiously took to the road.

Karen learned a few years ago, that as long as you keep the centre of the road on your left hand side, all will be well, although we did head two miles up the road in the wrong direction (although on the right side of the road!) when we came out of the airport.  It's astounding to us that the bigger the roads, the fewer signposts they have on them.

But we finally arrived, more or less on time to our first activity in Florida - an airboat trip around the Florida marshes, run by the very lovely Denny and Captain Mike of St Johns Airboat River Tour.

We scored a big hit with the accent, while Denny scored a big hit with the bag of food and goodies she brought for our tour, which instead of 90 minutes lasted more than two hours.  Obviously, they've been watching Downton and think all English people expect this kind of service...

The Florida marshes were spectacular.  We skidded across water and greenery, and loved the sort of half-land which was neither land nor water. 

This is a fantastic primeval landscape with inky water and spooky trees with their skirt of roots.

Something straight out of Cape Fear....

While the aligators were a trifle shy and we only caught the flick of their tails as they dived beneath the water, or the bumps on their eyes and noses as they rested just beneath the surface, the birds were in plentiful supply.

Roseate Spoonbills, which glowed pink in the failing light, white and black Ibis, bald headed eagles, osprey and others we forget... all scared out of their wits by the noise of the engine for our photographic pleasure. Only some of the photographs, sadly, warranted their discomfiture.  Some of them are below, but one of my personal favourites is one which reminded me of the vultures in the Jungle Book.

Pretty in pink...

Bald eagle - honest, Guv.

"I dunno - watcha wanna do?"

Tomorrow, we head to the Kennedy Space Centre, which we're REALLY excited about. So much so, it's not really British.

Sunday in Atlanta

We'd long decided that we wanted to visit the home of 24-hour, 24/7 news at CNN and get a bit of a backstage tour.  The journey there - courtesy of Geoff and Uber - was smooth, fast and full of proof that there are indeed, six degrees of separation between everyone in the world.  His daughter lives in Harrogate (one of Fiona's offices is there) and teaches at the University of Leeds (where I did my English degree).

We arrived at the enormous offices of CNN, which reminded me of GSK - atrium, food, echoing cathedrals to the god of media.

The tour was given by someone with a degree in journalism, hoping to fill a vacant position in production someday - which shows the strength of the saying 'Never let the truth get in the way of a good story'.

Fiona, staring at the longest unsupported escalator in the world, on which we travelled.

After a brisk and efficient tour where you were left impressed by the scale, but not much the wiser about how a story actually gets from a tweet to coverage by an anchor (all women under 35, slender and as permanent as the audience wants them to be), we left to meet Chris and Dan at Oakland Cemetery.

The guest of honour (so to speak) is Margaret Mitchell who wrote Gone With the Wind. She was under 50 when she died a decidedly unromantic death, being knocked over by a cab driver.

The last thing we did was to insist on seeing the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. Actually, it was Karen, and although Dan did try a little gentle disuasion, Karen was having none of it - so go the Botanical Gardens we did. 

Let's not beat about the bush (see what I did there?) we could have saved ourselves the admission price and Karen's aching knees. It was disappointing - although the orchid house was very good. Atlanta has clay soil and a very hot climate and grass which turns brown in the autumn.  Most of the 'exhibits' were man-made scarecrows for Halloween. I think Kew need not worry.  Although these grasses were pretty....

Going to town on spookiness!

Although we've long celebrated Halloween in the UK with apple bobbing and a few ghostly tales, we're nowhere near as competitive as our American friends seem to be.  Last evening after a day of southern hospitality and barbecue we decided that a walk around the neighbourhood would be a good idea.  Along they way we encountered ghouls and ghosties and skeletons in trees and even a river of pumpkins! I imagine that next week it will be even more frenetic with hordes of small people out trick or treating.

The pumpkins are coming!

Southern hospitality

We arrived yesterday to a very typical Southern welcome, as warm indeed as the weather! 

Dan and Chris have a wonderful house, furnished with many antique pieces off ocean liners - one of Dan's passions.  Indeed, we're in a lovely bedroom which has a bedside cabinets complete with lips to stop drinks and tea cups rolling off them in rough weather.  They haven't been tested yet, thankfully. 

We'd heard of the legendary Southern hospitality, and indeed, after a sound night's sleep, we got this text from Dan this morning:

I mean, what more could two English ladies want?

Greenland from 15,000 feet

This is the first time we've flown over Iceland and even Karen woke up enough to be impressed.  It would be an astonishing tragedy if this was to disappear, but we're aware of the supreme irony of taking a transatlantic flight whilst being concerned about the environment....

photos ahoy!

It's been a bit of a slog, working out which bits of plugs and wires to take with us so that you can see our photos. But I think we're finally here.  Admittedly, we've got enough kit to require an import licence to the States, and this will doubtless add another hour to the Immigration process... but what the hell. We're focused on satisfying you, our readers.

To test, I took a picture of our garden, still lovely despite the onset of Autumn, and - if the weather forecasters are to be believed - the coldest winter in a generation, with 36 days of snow and the expected (but not planned for) transport chaos.  

Not to rub it in, but where we're going the temperature is between 26 and 29 degrees. 

 

Almost as much planning as the trip!

I think we've re-activated the blog. Given the development in technology since we last wrote and the tendrils of power sneaking through the Internet, some of my less tech-savvy family may not have the energy to get accounts for tumblr, Wordpress and the rest.

Mind you, I reckon Blogspot has been acquired by Google, so if you don't have a gmail account, it may be invisible too!

So I'm hoping everyone will be able to see this and the photos. And that our identities aren't stolen by the time we get back.

So, on Friday morning, at godforsaken o'clock, we're off to Heathrow for our flight to Atlanta.

We're staying with the lovely Dan and Chris for a couple of days before we take another flight to Florida. We're spending a couple of days at the Kennedy Space Centre, and we're so excited, we can hardly keep still.

We'll be writing as we travel (one way for my failing memory to remember all we do!) and posting photographs so y'all can escape the otherwise obligatory two hour photo session when we get back.

Hopefully you'll follow us, or simply check back occasionally to hear our ramblings.