Antiques, Cupcakes and Santa

We left the house this morning at 10 this morning with the intention of going to one of the local museums, only to find that we had just missed the start of the morning tour and the next one wasn't until the afternoon.  So we moved our afternoon agenda ahead, which involved touring an area about two blocks long that seemed to have a high concentration of antique stores.  Museums? Who needs museums when there are antique stores to be explored??

We visited 6 or 7 antique stores (a couple of which turned out to be "antique malls", a collection of booths of various vendors), a clothing/gift store, a paper shop, a rubber stamp store and a used/rare book store (10 small rooms jammed full of books of every size and description, including the bathroom), each one containing various items of interest and delight. 

Found lots of goodies, some of which I purchased, some of which I needed to leave behind.  Here's what my haul looked like at the end of the day - several old books (my suitcase gets heavier every day!), washi tape, a pretty apron, St. Augustine souvenirs, amongst other things:

The first store had a bird cage with 3 sweet little zebra finches, which I had never seen before - look how pretty they are!  Apparently they tend to squabble but for this moment, they posed happily enough:

Four hours later, after a very late lunch, and a visit to the local cupcake store (featuring the best...lemon...cupcake...EVER!)

we made a quick visit to the St. Augustine Historical Museum

and then home for a bit of quiet time before heading out on the 6 p.m. Holly Jolly Trolley Tour.  They gave us 3D glasses that turned all the Christmas lights around town into snowflakes and we drove around for about 45 minutes seeing the sights and singing Xmas carols.  It was a lot of fun. 

I told Santa when I saw him that I didn't have my list ready just yet and he said I could email it to him whenever I'm ready. Phew!