We have been frequenting Nonna's Tratoria, a delicious Italian cafe on Aviles Street, where we have become good friends with the proprietor, Adamo. We introduced my brother, +daniel raz , and his fiance, Rhonda Head to this place when they came to town in August and they fell in love with it and the location - enough so that they decided to get married there on New Year's Day. Cristan and I returned to St. Augustine the day after Christmas for the wedding and had dinner at Nonnah's that night. After dinner and some time for business to calm down, Adamo was able to join us at table where he surprised us with 3 excellent recommendations for apartments that perfectly fit our criteria. We checked them out the next day and settled on a unit on Artillery Lane between Aviles and St. George streets.
Artillery Lane, Aviles Street and Charlotte Street are the oldest platted streets in the country. The apartment is converted from a building which was completed in 1910 for C.F. Hamblen and used as his general store. The building also later housed the Oldest Store Museum beginning in 2003. We are in a corner apartment overlooking the garden of the Segui-Kirby Smith house, built in the 1700's. As an added bonus the Sequi-Kirby Smith house is now the library of the St. Augustine Historical Society! What a find!!
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| Oldest Store Museum photo courtesy of State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory, http://floridamemory.com/items/show/93627 |
Cristan will start moving in within the next week and is so excited that she and the dog, Sable, are already packed.
Wow! What a wonderful start of a blog for such an exciting time for us! As Raz stated, Sable and I are all packed up and ready to go to move in to our new place in St. Augustine and begin this wonderful journey into history in the Nation's oldest city.
ReplyDeleteWe have been truly blessed to find such an awesome location right in the heart of downtown! I will, undoubtedly, be visiting Adamo and Chef Joe at Nonnas Trattoria very frequently as it is only 85 steps from my front door!
As Raz mentioned, our unit overlooks the garden of the Segui-Kirby Smith house. The garden is beautiful and features a 1800's fountain and a statue of General Smith and Dr. Darnes. I will surely be there a lot to relax, read a book and have tea as it is also home to dozens of beautiful plants such as lily, bamboo, plum, fern, elm, azalea, hydrangea and many, many more.
As Raz mentioned in one of his blogs, we are pursuing a project of creating an electronic walking tour and being right next to the Segui-Kirby house will be extremely helpful as it now belongs to the city of St. Augustine and functions as the library for the St. Augustine Historical Society. It houses thousands of volumes, photos, maps, microfilm reels, records and manuscript collections.
So, as one could see, I am very excited about this move and the beginning of yet another dream for Raz and I.
I think that my next post will have to be the story about how those two statues scared Cristan one night as she was marching off those 85 steps.
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