FLORIDA: It’s not only tourists who live it up in St Augustine

It’s their last day in St Augustine and time for a much-needed afternoon on the beach, but first TravelMole editor Bev Fearis and family have two more must-do sights to see.

The bayfront of St Augustine is dominated by the elegant Bridge of Lions but so far I’ve only ventured over it on my morning jog. Today, we’re going across in our Hertz hire car to check out the city’s other main tourist attractions.

First stop is the Lighthouse, a historic working lighthouse with a 219-step spiral staircase to the top for fabulous views of the nation’s oldest city.

Unfortunately, Freddie, aged 3 and 39 ins (as we discovered at Disney) is too small to climb the stairs, so Warren and I take it in turns to climb while the other one watches Freddie pretend to be Peter Pan in the little playground – pirate themed, of course.

To be fair, he’s not that interested in the Lighthouse anyway. He’s far too excited about our next port of call – the St Augustine Alligator Farm Zoological Park just across the road. In all honesty, Warren and I are more excited about seeing the alligators too.

It’s even better than we imagined, home to more than 2,700 alligators and crocodiles, including rare albino ones and Maximo, an Australian croc that is 15 feet, 3 inches long.

Maximo has his own pool and enclosure (apparently he can be a bit snappy), but most of the alligators are living in a big swamp with a wooden boardwalk across it for viewing. Alongside the alligators and crocs, there are snakes, Komodo dragons, beautiful tropical birds, monkeys, lemurs and turtles (my favourites).

In 2011, the park opened a new zip-line attraction, Crocodile Crossing, which allows visitors (only the fit and agile ones) to zip over the entire park and see the wildlife from above.

It looked like fun, but we decided to tour by foot this time, making sure we were back by the main alligator pit in time for the midday feeding time. We expected it to be a messy, noisy and violent affair, with the alligators fighting each other over bloody meat, but in fact it was very civilised.

The park keeper threw out three or four dead rats and most of the alligators didn’t bat an eyelid. That’s because, as we were surprised to learn, these creatures can survive on very little – the equivalent of a sandwich a week apparently.

Click here to sample the highlights of the alligator farm

It was time for lunch and we’d brought our own sandwiches to have on the beach at the Anastasia State Park.

This stunning 1,600-acre protected park is just a 10-minute drive from St Augustine’s city centre and has four miles of pristine beaches backed with grassy dunes. You pay $8 per car to enter and then you can walk, kayak, sail, windsurf, or go bird spotting.

After a few full days of sightseeing, we chose to skip all of the above and just sit on the beach and do nothing. The weather had been unusually warm (mid-late 70s) and we wanted to make the most of it. Annoyingly, not long after we’d laid out our beach towels, it clouded over, but it was still lovely.

That night, we followed a recommendation and strolled a bit further along the bayfront to OC Whites Seafood, just across from the marina. Every meal we’d had in St Augustine has been top notch and great value, and this was no different. The menu was seafood focussed as usual and we also ordered a few cocktails. Not all restaurants here have full liquor licences, but this one does, so I had a mojito and Warren went for the house special – a pirate-themed rum-based cocktail, of course.

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