Why St. Augustine?

In May of 2012, +Cristan Carmon and I were on vacation for a couple of weeks in Fort Lauderdale, FL.  We had driven down from Columbia, SC, stopping in Daytona for one night on the way just to break up the long drive.  The stopover worked out so well that I determined to do the same on the way back to Columbia.  A couple of years ago my sister, +Suzanne Smith , was in the area for her son's, +Sean Smith , graduation from Embry-Riddle University and she had visited St. Augustine while she was in the state.  She raved about it and told me that the city should be a 'must see' on my list.  Su has great taste in these matters so I chose St. Augustine as the stopover point on the return home from Lauderdale.

I chose The Inn on Charlotte for our stay since it appeared to be well positioned in the middle of the historic part of town.  It is a quaint bed and breakfast that is converted from a home built in the early 1900's and Charlotte is a cobblestone street only one block west of the harbor.  Cristan had been asleep as we pulled into town, but woke up as soon as I turned onto the cobblestones.  She popped her head up, took one look around, and the first thing she said was, "Wow!  We're going to have to stay more than one day".  I agreed.  The historic part of town has that effect.  Little did I know what 'more than one day' would equate to.  I had booked one night in the converted carriage house behind the inn, but it was already reserved for the next night.  We extended one night and moved into the big house the next day.

St. Augustine is the oldest town in the US.  You can't throw a rock there without hitting a building that's older than the whole rest of the country.  The narrow streets in the old city are set up perfectly for walking and that's what people do.  This contributes to the overall feeling of pace of the town.  It seems to breathe and beat at a walker's pace rather than the jet-set feel of most of our other cities.  The combination of history and pace gives a feeling that, as they say in Louisiana, "is so good you t'ink you someplace else".

I had learned from my forays into Charleston, SC that a great way to learn a town is by using a walking tour - a small pamphlet with a map of historic locations and a brief description of each.  We asked around and looked for one of these with no luck.  I have been searching ever since and after much effort have only found two attempts at a walking tour.  One is The Standard Guide from 1898 and the other is Dr. Bronson's History of St. Augustine and both only appear to be available on-line.  The Standard Guide is well suited to a walking tour if printed out, but a bit out of date.  Dr. Bronson's guide is more up to date and may have been available in print form at one time, but is not easy to print now.  This got me thinking that an electronic walking tour would be a perfect fit for any GPS enabled smart phone or tablet.  It would be easier to use than a pamphlet since you could listen to the commentary as you stroll around and the GPS locator would keep track of your position and point out interesting things that are around you.

Cristan and I left St. Augustine with plans to return in 2 weeks.  That led to other stays and the more we experienced the town, the deeper we fell in love with it.  Cristan even had an extended stay of 2-1/2 months in a sub-leased apartment.  We finally decided to just go ahead and get a place in town and move to St. Augustine.  So now we will be living on the oldest platted street in the oldest city in the country and what better place to pursue the vision of an electronic walking tour while we learn about our new surroundings?  I have since established a little dot com, NAVIDET, for this project with plans to make it scale-able to additional cities.

So that's the reason why St. Augustine is the pilot location for our project.