Quiet Christmas Saturday around town

Most of St. Augustine’s stores and restaurants were closed yesterday in celebration of Christmas; traffic was generally light, parking lots were largely empty, only one carriage on the bayfront, shoe-leather was the mode of transportation for most of those out sightseeing.

Colonial downtown stores in the restoration area were open, as was the Castillo de San Marcos and Alligator Farm, however, not all local attractions followed suit — the ones who did benefited by travelers and townspeople looking to walk-off big Christmas dinners or to escape the confines of too-small houses overstuffed with hyper-excited children, in-laws, and crazy Uncle Buck.

Forget going to McDonald’s or Dunkin Donuts for coffee, in fact almost all of the fast food restaurants took a day off. It was a good day for chickens — Chick-fil-A was closed, as was Zaxby’s and KFC. The Royals took the day off, too; no Dairy Queen or Burger King.

The mall was closed, the superstores and strip-centers were closed, so, to avoid complicated, embarrassing moments, Walgreen’s steadfastly manned the cash registers in order to keep the forgetful out of the doghouse.

Today will be a traveling day for many of St. Augustine’s holiday visitors — either off to Disney if they have next week off, or, back home, if they have jobs to go home to. We need more of them to stay and enjoy a couple of extra days with us this year; so that they can enjoy the places that were closed yesterday or attractions they didn’t have the time to see.

Photo credits: © 2010 Historic City News staff photographer