Health Travelers Seek Fountain of Youth In St. Augustine
Wow! Who knew there was so much to do in St. Augustine? One of the benefits of being in the medical profession is that you have to take continuing education courses.
As medical travelers, people who take temporary assignments in cities or states away from their homes, you get the opportunity to take continuing ed courses in cities that you might not get the chance to visit otherwise.
My wife the Traveler decided to take a recent course on "modalities' offered at the University of Florida at St. Augustine. Medical professionals will know what it is but I am mostly clueless. She told me what it was, but it went in one ear and out the other.
My wife is a traveler. I am her husband and chronicler of our adventures. She is with a staffing company that finds her a job, hopefully in a city and state of her choice, but not always. Sometimes the job opening of choice is just not there. The staffing company also finds the apartment, pays the rent and utilities and pays her an hourly wage.
And I have to tell you, it's not a bad life - mostly. There are adjustments, which I have discussed in earlier blogs and will continue to enumerate in future articles.
Back to St. Augustine. We had this planned for a couple of months. The seminar was to be held on a Saturday and Sunday and she would get about 12 points for the course, more than enough to meet state licensing requirements for continuing education for the year for her license in North Carolina. The Traveler holds three state licenses - North Carolina, South Carolina and Florida.
The Traveler took off Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. You should know that when you are a traveler, you only get paid when you work. I don't know of any staffing company that gives you sick days. There may be some. We haven't looked at every medical staffing company - though it sometimes seems like we have.
Some companies give you vacation days which you can accrue in a variety of creative ways, but generally you can't take off in the middle of an assignment and get paid for it. In some cases the establishment you are assigned to may not let you have the time off, so prepare carefully.
But Carol prepared for this and told the facility before she agreed to come on board that she would need time off to attend the seminar.
Moreover, we wanted to make a mini-vacation out of it. So we left Thursday evening after she got off work and drove into St. Augustine, about 370 miles from Southern Alabama - opps! - I mean Pensacola, FL.
This left us with Friday to explore the nation's oldest European established city.
We decided to first take a tour to get the highlights of what to see and do. Besides, parking was at a premium around the city.
But you can park at one of the stops of the various tour companies and park there for free and ride around the city, get off and on anytime up until about 4 pm. There are a couple of tour offerings in St. Augustine. The Red Train had a sign in their parking lot that you had to be out by 5 p.m. or your car would be towed.
We were out by 4:30, but when we passed by a little after 5 p.m. sure enough a tow truck was hitching to some poor visitor's car. We saw the guy exit from the train just as it arrived and run to his car. I think he was able to talk the guy out of towing it off.
For the Red Trains, operated by "Ripley's Believe It Or Not," we parked at their operations station, took the entire 1 hour and 15 minute tour and then got off somewhere in the Old City on the second time around.
There are literally hundreds of shops offering just about everything along the quaint street of St. George.
We got to hear three different guides since we rode the train at three different times and they all tell the same information but the facts may differ a little. Nonetheless, it is still informative, and to me, interesting.
As we drove around the public square in the old city in the open air trains, the guide is easily heard by passersby. The Square, where the British used to sell slaves, was holding an arts and crafts fair. One guy objected to one of the tidbits of information the guide was giving and loudly proclaimed on the sidewalk as he followed us that, "He's a liar! That's not true!"
I don't quite recall what particular nugget of tour-guide wisdom he didn't like. It didn't matter to me. I take everything they say with a "grain of salt" anyway.
There is just too much information to talk about in a single blog. The history of the place, the various buildings and their stories and the sights alone make it an interesting place for me.
The original "Ripley's Believe It or Not," where the show hosted by Actor Dean Cain shoots some of the scenes, is located in St. Augustine, and is one of the stops on the tour.
And of course, The Fountain of Youth, that Ponce DeLeon was searching for, is there and is one of the stops on the tour. It's the reason St. Augustine was discovered in the first place.
I guess I should say discovered by Europeans, because it was already discovered by the people living there, the Timucuan Indians. Sadly, there are none in existence today.
If you go to St. Augustine, you will hear a lot about bloody battles, coquina walls, and Henry Flagler. All are important in the history of St. Augustine.
The Red Train tickets are good for three days and I rode the train several times while the Traveler was taking her seminar. I got off a various locations and walked around and took a lot of pictures.
The trains run pretty frequently and one hits a Train Stop about every 15 minutes.
While strolling around the Old City, we bought chocolate from a little chocolate shop that makes their own candy. Carol purchased a gift for one of our two daughter's upcoming birthday, an original gift made in the Southwest of buffalo bone.
All in all we had a great time and plan to go back to St. Augustine again to see all the stuff we didn't have time for the first visit.
