This trip started out actually while I was in Nashville earlier last year with my sister. We ended up going to Bass Pro Shop and they had a travel center there. The guy pulled us aside and was giving us these crazy offers for a vacation. It took me a little bit to agree to it because it sounded to good to be true. Well we paid just over $200 for a 4 night vacation in St. Augustine. The only catch was you had to attend a timeshare presentation. No big deal that's not to much to ask for the discount they were giving us. Also after we signed up there we got a $50 Bass Pro Shop gift card with the promise of another $100 gift card after we attended the presentation. So fast forward to our Christmas getaway in St. Augustine.
When we arrived we had to go check in with the resort to get our hotel vouchers. We were hungry by the time we got there so they referred us to CaddyShack which is owned by Bill Murray and his brothers. So we decided to check it out.
There was this awesome chopper with a Caddyshack theme there that was built by Orange County Choppers. The food was ok just your typical bar restaurant type of food. The atmosphere was great looking around at all the memorabilia.
After that we went and checked in the Hotel. Then we headed to the downtown area to figure out what we were going to do. It was raining quite a bit so I didn't pull out the big camera to take any photos the first couple of days we were there.
The first place we went was Ripley's Believe it or Not! I couldn't resist taking a picture of the shrunken head. I didn't take any other pictures while we were there.
Later that night we went to this bbq place called Mojo BBQ for dinner. This place was great!
The next day was Christmas Eve and we had to go to our presentation of the timeshare. Well we ended up purchasing into the program. We were there from 8:30am–2:00pm, but not because anybody made us feel like we had to stay. We were taking our time deciding on whether we really wanted to do it. The salesman was very patient with us. For making the purchase they gave us a free 2-night stay with an owner review. So we will be going back to St. Augustine in February.
We were starving after that and ended up at a little Irish Bar and Restaurant. The food was really awesome here.
Then we headed back to the downtown area and ended up at the San Sebastin Winery. We missed out on the tour of the chocolate factory and the distillery because everything closed early for Christmas Eve. We walked around for a bit and enjoyed all the christmas lights (which I did not get any pictures of).
Heading back to the car we stopped in the old pharmacy and wax museum and they had a Dobby statue right up front. Dobby is one of my favorite characters, I just love him.
For Christmas we realized there wasn't much to do because there wasn't a lot of places open. We had purchased a haunted tour of the lighthouse for the next night, so we decided to drive over and see where it was located. You can see how dreary of a day it was.
The only thing that was open was the Alligator Farm, so we went to check it out. Here are some of my favorite photos.
After the Alligator Farm we decided to go relax at the hotel for a bit. I made the boyfriend watch the movie The Family Stone. He didn't care for it!
We had a hard time trying to find a good place to eat dinner. I ended up on Yelp and found a Sushi Restaurant not to far from the hotel that had excellent reviews. So we decided to give it a try. This was the best Sushi I have ever eaten. The texture of the fish was so buttery and wonderful. I also tried the Green Tea Mochi Ice Cream and that was delicious.
I took so many pictures on our last day there I thought it would be best to split this into two posts. Hopefully I will get those photos edited and posted tomorrow.