The second stop on the Saint Augustine tour is the Castillo de San Marco. Or as us dumb Murican’s like to put it, the fort in Saint Augustine.

My readers should know by this point that I love taking great pictures. So I am finally at a fort and I thought to myself ‘What a great time to get a picture of me holding down the fort’. What I mean by this is that I wanted to take a picture in similar fashion to those where a person is standing in front of the Leaning Tower of Pisa trying to push it back up or in front of the Taj Mahal squeezing the structure like an ant.

Unfortunately no matter how hard I tried, this was a concept that I could not articulate clearly enough to my girlfriend. What you see are three feeble attempts of taking a picture where I am holding down the fort.

Finally, frustrated, I know the only way I am going to get the picture that I want is to do it myself and show her how its done.

What do you know? First try and I take a perfect picture. Now that I felt the concept was fully grasped, I felt the picture I required would come.

Not perfect but I’ll accept it. This is one of the reasons I know our relationship would have never worked. Her lack of photography skills would never bode well with an aspiring photo journalist like myself. But like I said, I am not going to harp on her unless I think it is crucial to the comedy of the story.

So we head towards the main entrance but by this point in the day its time for the daily cannon shooting from the fort. I suppose its widely known to the sail boats that every day before dinner time a cannon ball is shot into the bay because none of the vessels seemed concerned to scurry out of the way.

After waiting 20 minutes for the cannon blast we find that only one cannonball is fired a day. Not the firework show I was hoping for. Even worse, I only captured the one photo. Hey, at least it was better than the 15 failed attempts of a picture of me holding down the fort. Ha!

OK, so finally time to actually go in the fort. So I suppose this is a good to let you know that we actually did visit the fort on my trip to Saint Augustine when I was 9. So I was expecting much. I guess I just wanted to relive some nostalgia.

So we head towards the entrance to pay the admission fee but at this point and in tune with capitalizing off of my girlfriend’s military discount. It was the first thing that crossed my mind before even greeting the cashier at the station. He asks for the active duty ID or whatever its called… Then he looks back and goes, “Hey Rob, do we accept Coast Guard as active duty discount?”. I must say, even as a civilian, I was offended. I was offended as an American by that comment. Who knows what kind of rage my girlfriend was going through at the moment.

My ongoing theme of people carving their names into something beautiful

We make it through the ignorant process without losing our head and finally find ourselves inside the fort.

Little crawlspace I found

There isn’t really a lot to write home about inside the fort. It just a sight to see. Admire the ocean. Think about the history, etc…

I’m not sure how I felt about the installation of modern restrooms in the fort.

At the top of the fort you get to see why the location was chosen. Probably the best vantage point along the Florida Atlantic coast.

Me and my cannon

No attraction is complete without me taking a lewd photo.

After leaving the fort, it is easy to cross the street and find many watering holes and tourist attractions. You can walk up and down for a few hours and really feel like you are on vacation. But after seeing the fountain and the fort in the same day you know its time to call it a day!