Day 26: Thoughts While Still Lying in Bed

I have always been an early riser, and vacation is no different. Especially on a night like last night where the pup made noises every time someone passed the room.

As I lay awake and wait for you to get up, my mind is wandering through the memoryscapes to sleep away camp. How on just a thin mattress in a cabin with 7 other girls, I’d sleep like a rock. The funny moments where we’d catch a cabin-mate sleep talking. The summer that Atlantis had bed bugs and all the girls had to bag up their stuff (what happened to them? Did they sleep somewhere else? Did their parents have to send them more things? I remember the cabin like this foreboding haunted thing, lying empty all session.)

The bed here is a king and it’s a big cloud. My tuft and needle mattress at home is pretty cloud-like too. I sleep on my sides or back but never on my stomach. The dog is curled up against my right leg and you’re still asleep to my left, so I’m like the in-betweens of a sandwich.

St. Augustine has so many random shops, but many of the same random shop: hot sauce places, steampunk stores, ice cream shops. I don’t know how someone comes down here and decides, “hey, I think I’ll open up another ice cream shop,” and manages to get by. The man playing live music at the restaurant last night had been doing Monday night sets for almost twenty years. He had long hair and played covers all night long. Something about this town reminds me of New Paltz. This college student + old hippie vibe.

My stomach grumbles. I wonder what we’ll eat for breakfast. I’m craving waffles and bacon or French toast. Today we’ll visit the Castillo de San Marcos fort and we have dinner reservations. The rest of the day is open. I expect more wandering, more judging and questioning of the people we see, and definitely more ice cream.