The Castillo

When I saw photos of the Castillo de San Marcos, like the one above, I assumed that this fort was out of town somewhere. But no. It's the first thing you see when you come into downtown, across the street from the Pirate and Treasure Museum, between Ripley's Believe It Or Not and the horse carriage rides, and just before the bridge to the beaches. Traffic is interesting here.

But as much as I might have scoffed at the touristing-up of so many things here, the fort was a lot of fun. It was surprisingly beautiful.

Lots of explanatory signage helped convey the sense of what it was like to try to hold onto this piece of the world in an era when the English, French, and Spanish were all hell-bent on establishing New World empires. (Florida actually changed hands three times, from Spain to England, back to Spain, and finally to the U.S., and wasn't a state until 1845. That doesn't count some Huguenots who tried to establish a colony early on and got wiped out for their trouble. Or, of course, the Seminoles and other local people. Therein lies yet another tale for another day.)

Uniformed "Spanish" soldiers were hanging around a campfire on the parade grounds, or helping kids work on their Junior Ranger badges.

At the appointed hour, everyone gathered on the gun deck to see how this bit of coastline was defended.

They fired off the cannon just as they did in the early 1700s, the whys and wherefores of which were very interesting.

We left with images of sun, sea, and color in our heads, along with some serious thoughts about the impulse to conquer new worlds and the ordinary people who, willy-nilly, became part of that enterprise.