Once we had finished looking round the museum, and assaulting
poultry, we had a look round some of the shops. As we were travelling for 13
weeks there was a real need to budget, so luxury items such as souvenirs
and in particular postcards were not priorities. Before we left the UK we told
people that we would not be sending postcards, mainly for financial reasons
and besides we sent email bulletins home every week. We relented when it
came to our parents however and sent three or four cards home during our
travels. St Augustine, with all its history, seemed a good place to buy some
cards and we quickly found a gift shop - complete with crazy cashier. Either
she was spaced out (she was a college student – more prejudice) or just tired,
but she offered to let us rob the shop and said she would burn it down to
cover our tracks - all because we did not have the right change for a few
postcards!
At nightfall St Augustine goes very quiet, certainly in January, and all the
shops and museums closed quite early. It felt a bit like a Cornish town, or
possibly Whitby in Yorkshire, off-season and after all the grannies have gone
home for tea. We did not feel like spending another evening just reading in the
van, but fortunately another option presented itself in the form of Pot Belly's
$4.75 Movie Theatre (actually $5 when we visited). Emma and I love going to
the cinema, we go once a week at home, and managed to clock up eight
times during our travels. As soon as we saw an advert for Pot Belly's we could
not resist a visit, especially after the telephone information service told us that
'Mr. Pot Belly highly recommends the Last Samurai' - not that we are into Tom
Cruise but because this suggested that Mr. Pot Belly was a real person, and