It has sort of become a tradition in our house that we go away for our birthdays and celebrate them pretty big. We usually like to fly somewhere but since we have moved to Florida we have so many places that are drivable on our bucket lists and so we decided {well Dustin did} for his birthday that we should check one of those off for his birthday. We had heard so many good things from friends about St. Augustine so we choose to head there for the weekend! We spent two nights and the majority of three days there and it was great! We packed up the car and drove the short two and a half hours up to St. Augustine and started the birthday weekend!
WHERE WE STAYED
This was my first time ever staying in an AirBnb and I really had no idea what to expect. But after deciding that we wanted to split our time between the beach and downtown St. Augustine for this trip we decided right in the middle would be perfect to have the best of both worlds. I found this airbnb and was skeptical of it being a part of someones house but was PLEASANTLY surprised and would 10000% stay here again! Katrina had the cutest welcome sign and note, tons of information on restaurants and things to do in the area, the coffee bar was stocked, there was a mini fridge and microwave. There were tons of little added things that she did to make our stay perfect and not really need to worry about a thing while we were there! We had our own parking space and entry way in to the room on the back of the house and we felt comfortable and safe the entire time which is really all I could ask for! It seemed like their house or at least the suite we were staying in had just been renovated, it was so nice inside! They also had the cutest dog named chance that came out and said hi to us while we were on the patio one morning when we were headed out for breakfast!
WHAT WE ATE
I learned my lesson from St. Pete and took a lot more photos of food while we were in St. Augustine and I am so glad I did because we had a lot of good food and I want to share it with you. Not all of these are not going to be full reviews because I will do a gluten free review in the near future but as I write each of them I will add the links to this blog post so you have an easy way to get to it!
BREAKFAST
Kookaburra Coffee - I literally think that the Honey Badger coffee that I got from here was the best coffee I have ever had and I feel like I have tried a lot of coffee in my day! I got it iced and Dustin got it hot and we both loved them! I also tried the pumpkin donut and that was pretty good as well. You can read the full review here!
Beachside Diner - We went here on our last day in St. Augustine for breakfast and it was so yummy. I think they had the best hash browns I have ever had. It was a very simple breakfast of hash browns, eggs, gluten free toast and bacon! It was great! Dustins breakfast was 20x more exciting than me, he had the spicy chicken and waffles and he said they were delicious. He brought the leftover chicken and ate it as leftovers and loved it for the second time. He said it was spicy, great, and he would get it again and again!
LUNCH
The Conch House Restaurant - We went here the first afternoon that we were there and besides the view that was really all that was good in the gluten free category. I had the nachos that were on the appetizer menu and they were literally disgusting. The taco meat wasn’t like taco.. it was like ketchup was mixed into it with the grossest cheese. I also got a cup of the seafood chowder and it tasted like that weird vegetable soup we used to get as kids with bits of fish in it. I wouldn’t recommend this place beyond maybe getting a drink, sitting in one of the outdoor tables and looking at the view!
Green Papaya Thai & Sushi Cuisine - This is where we ate the second day for lunch and it was SO good! I started with the spicy California roll and Dustin got some “sushi” but other places I have been they call it nigiri. He liked them all! Then we realized that they had otoro as a special and we each got a piece of that. If you haven’t tried it is a melt in your mouth piece of fish that we look for everywhere we go! It is the “most desirable part of the tunas belly”. YUM! Then as our main entree we both got chicken pad Thai and it was a 10/10. I got a spice level 2 and I think I could have done a 3! I will be writing a full review on Green Papaya and you will be able to read that review here!
DINNER
The Floridian - We absolutely loved this place! We both actually had the Fried Chicken Sandwich which we really try not to do when we go out to eat, but oh well, we did this time. We also got the Biscuits and Belly as our appetizer to share and it was seriously 100%! I would go back just for the gluten free biscuits! You can read my full Gluten Free Review of The Floridian here!
Casa Maya - We stopped into Casa Maya for a drink and some appetizers. Dustin is a huge ceviche fan and they had shrimp or octopus civiche that he wanted to try. We both also got drinks, I got the Smokey Granada which was Ojo De Tigre, Grand Marnier, rosemary simple, pomegranate and lime. Dustin got the 400 Rabbits which was Montelobos, lime, Oregat, Boomerang and grilled pineapple. To eat I got the chips and guacamole and both dishes were pretty good. I believe that they brought us these chips because they were safe for me to eat with my gluten allergy. Plus they had live music and that was fun!
Burrito Works Taco Shop - We went here late on the second night as we were realizing that everything was closed after listening to the live band. Dustin got a huge burrito and I got some chicken nachos which were really good. We also got chips and queso to share. I honestly was nervous about if I was going to get glutened or not but it actually was fine and the nachos were probably the safest thing for me to get because it was on tin foil the whole time and never touched anything it shouldn’t have. We got ours to go and took it back to the airbnb and sat in bed, watched Jurassic Park and devoured our meals! It was a great way to end the trip!
DRINKS
Odd Birds Cocktail Lounge - When we first were moving to Florida I started like a little bucket list of things that I wanted to do while we lived here.. big or small, I just wrote it down! Well I must have seen a TikTok or something about this cute bar and wrote it on my Florida Bucket list and forgot about it. When we were sitting at the bar ordering a drink it dawned on my that THIS place was on my Bucket List and I didn’t even realize it! But there we were ordering YUMMY and fun drinks from this bar and I was able to cross it off my list!
There was an option on the menu to ask the bartender to just come up with something for you to drink so that’s what we both did. I told him I couldn’t have whiskey and he went with it! He made me something called a Dead Spicy Lady which was like smoky mezcal, Aperol, falernum and Scrappy’s Hellfire bitters is what made it spicy. I am not even a huge tequila person but it was SO good! The bartender made Dustin called a Paper Plane and it had like bourbon, aperol and Amaro Nonino Quintessentia and I believe he put the hellfire bitters in it as well to make his spicy! This bar was a lot of fun and the food looked good as well but we just stopped for a drink!
Slugs Pub - We stopped in here on the way downtown the second night to grab a drink because we noticed that they had a pool table but there were about 10 people in the whole place and 6 of them had just started playing pool. We each grabbed a cider but didn’t stay long. We decided to finish our drinks and keep walking! I also feel like I should show you the weird phone, TV, cartoon picture collage situation that was in this bathroom!
Prohibition Kitchen - This is where we ended out night on the second night out! But there was a live band, a good vibe and a lot of fun! We had some French fries from here and they were so good. I will link their menu for those of you who are interested! I was either starving or they had the best ranch that I have ever tasted in my life! I couldn’t even believe how good it was. We didn’t get anything crazy to drink here. Dustin stuck to his normal whiskey ginger situation and I had a cider just because I was worried about mixing the few tequila drinks that I had from earlier with more things. Might just be me though! Haha. But we liked the band and stayed there until about 1:30 before heading to find a snack! I will also link to their drink menu because it looked like there were some fun ones to try that we might have missed out on!
WHAT WE DID
*us trying to get a picture on a timer with my phone leaning against a potted plant on the ground after a few Cutwater Grapefruit Vodka Sodas while we were mini-golfing haha
Like most of our trips we mostly just jumped from place to place finding delicious food and drinks! This trip started off being REALLLL rough. On our drive there we were in a tornado warning that was literally heading right towards us and we were in the pouring rain. Once we finally made it out of that and to the beach to walk about before the next patch of rain, we rolled down our window to pay for parking and our window would not roll back up. It was stuck and we didn’t want our car to get rain damage so we headed to the Toyota dealership. After sitting there for the majority of our day we finally were given a rental car and told to come back tomorrow to get our car from them. So our first day wasn’t really spent doing anything besides taking a much deserved nap and eating and doing a little walking around in the downtown area. We didn’t take advantage of the history tours like I thought we did but we were really all that sad about missing them. It was nice to have no agenda and just go where we pleased.
But the second day we did go mini golfing near our airbnb and that was a lot of fun. We went to Anastasia Mini Golf and it was a lot of fun. Not too crowded, they had drinks available to buy and it was a fun course. We had a blast and we don’t usually mini golf so it was fun to do something different. Besides that we did do some wandering around downtown St. Augustine. We popped in and out of shops, saw tons of dolphins watching from the bridge and we really liked the live music at the Prohibition bar which I wrote about above!
RECOMMENDATIONS
Before our trip started we got a few recommendations that we didn’t get a chance to try but I wanted to list them here for you guys! Someone said that we should try a restaurant called Columbia and another person recommended the A1A Ale Works Restaurant & Taproom as well! For some shopping we got a recommendation to check out Two Sparrows boutique! We didn’t get to do these but maybe next time!
I know that you probably get to the bottom of my blog posts and the last paragraph I probably sound like a broken record but I just want to make sure I cover all my bases and let you guys know that you are more than welcome to reach out or comment below with questions that you might have! I also wanted to link my 24 Hour in St. Pete Beach blog post just in case you’re headed there as well!
