World Beer Tour!

Originally, on Friday, we had all planned to make the trip back to Orlando and visit the second of the two theme parks that we all planned to visit together, Disney's Epcot Center. However, after waking up so early the night before and after enduring the 2.5 hour commute to and from the theme park, we all agreed that perhaps our eyes were bigger than our bellies so to speak. Instead of waking up early and heading south again, we decided to make it a leisurely morning then spend the afternoon in nearby St. Augustine, the nations oldest city. Our first stop in the city was to take a free tour of the San Sebastian Winery and get Mike and Erin's first wine tasting under their belt. The winery was surprisingly packed, having about 3 tours / tastings going on at once. The wine was just OK and our pourer, having to entertain an entire crowd, did not give us the one on one attention that Katie had come to associate with wine tastings. It was still a lot of fun, just too bad that it had

to be Mike and Erin's first experience in a winery, crammed around a small table fighting for a place to set your glass. After the winery, which was located on the outskirts of town, we made our way into the downtown proper. Once we found some parking,

a rare commodity on this day, we made our way over to the A1A Brewery where we destroyed a plate of nachos and then again hit the streets. We walked around beautiful downtown St. Augustine for about an hour, window shopping and trying to stake out or next place to eat. Along the way we stopped in a hole in the wall bar and popped a couple bucks into the Megatouch machine. It turns out that no one in St. Augustine plays those type of games and we ended up milking the 2 dollars for over 2 hours since we kept getting record scores and thus, bonus replays. After ADAM BANKS had made his mark we hopped into a little tapas and wine bar down a small side street, ordered a bottle of wine and some food, and spent the rest of the night sitting outside enjoying the atmosphere not to mention the wine, food, and company.

Saturday was another lazy day. Mike especially felt like taking the day off and spending it the way he usually does, lounging around the house watching TV and movies, mixed in with the "occasional" catnap. We again had an early morning on Sunday. We had to make it back to Orlando to visit Disney's Epcot Center. We had

took it upon ourselves to try and complete the Epcot Beer World Tour, which consists of walking around all the 11 countries and sampling their fare along the way. We had all day to complete this task and we took our time and had a lot of fun doing it. We

started in Canada and worked our way counter clockwise around the pond. Katie and I got to sample wine from France, Italy, and Germany, sake from Japan, margaritas from Mexico, and beers from everywhere else. We ended up

eating at half the countries along the way as well, not being able to help ourselves from sampling the native cuisine. We even got to ride the few

thrill rides that the park has to offer. By the end of the day we were all exhausted. Thankfully Mike refrained from drinking and was able to cart us all home. Katie and I took advantage of the car ride again and napped on the way home and even after that we were ready for bed once we got back to Jacksonville. We did not envy Mike in the slightest, he was the only one of our group that had to work in the morning; Erin had the day off to honor Presidents Day.

On Monday Katie and I again headed south to visit St. Augustine, this time sans Mike and Erin. Mike was busy working and Erin felt she needed to spend the day collecting herself and cleaning the house. Katie and I had interest in visiting St. Augustine again in order to take a more historical approach to the city. The Castillo de San Marcos is a National Monument located in downtown St. Augustine. It is a fort built by the Spanish who founded the city to protect from the town from the French who had claims south of the city. After touring the fort we went to a nearby restaurant called Sangria to have some lunch. Our seats were on the second floor and overlooked the main street meaning we had a prime location for people watching. That night Mike and Erin took us out to dinner for our first ever encounter with Indian cuisine. Katie and I were instant fans and were super excited to add another dining option to our repertoire.