Things to Do in St. Augustine, Florida

Don't think that because St. Augustine isn't a sprawling metropolis it doesn't have a number of options when it comes to fine dining. If you've come with your wife, these restaurants will offer up a great treat.

While learning about the history of this town, make sure to visit Florida's oldest restaurant, The Columbia. The menu includes traditional Spanish dishes that include local seafood favorites such as calamari, scallops and crab. Dishes include empanadas de picadillo (spiced ground beef filled pastry turnovers with corn and black bean salsa) and queso fundido (Spanish tetilla cheese baked in rioja tomato sauce with toasted Cuban bread). It is a bit pricey, but the lunch is just as moderately priced as any other restaurant.

The St. Augustine Winery has daily wine tastings, live jazz/rock bands Friday through Sunday and is one of the more frequented venues over the weekend. Dancing is encouraged. There are dozens of wines available, and what's more, they actually make their own.

If you came to tour the courses in St. Augustine with some buddies, don't fear. There are plenty of hidden gems all over St. Augustine that will help you unwind after a long, hard day on the links:

Stogie's is a cigar bar and jazz lounge in downtown St. Augustine. There's live jazz almost every night, with comfortable couches and dozens of selections of beer and wine. There's also a walk-in humidor with hundreds of cigars. They'll cut, light and let you smoke it wherever you like.

There's also a Ripley's Believe It Or Not museum near the Matanzas Bay that features exhibits and provides information on people who are too strange to be true. Inside, learn about the man with six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot or the man who ate hundreds of pounds of glass throughout his lifetime. The museum will provide hours of entertainment for the time you're not touring St. Augustine's courses.

You can also purchase a ticket on a trolley that will give you a tour of St. Augustine, past and present. You'll learn about St. Augustine's history: where the first school in the United States was located, where the first bar was ... it's hours of entertainment and education.

If the part of golf you like the most is being outdoors, St. Augustine offers plenty of other options:

Anastasia State Park is frequented by hundreds of thousands visitors every year. There's camping, nature trails, beach time and an archaeological site where coquina rock was mined to create the nearby fortress, Castillo de San Marcos. Anastasia State Park is located just south of the historic part of St. Augustine and is located on Anastasia Island. It includes nearly five miles of beach and a salt marsh.

Just a little bit to the north is the Tree Hill Nature Center in between Jacksonville and St. Augustine. There are bird sanctuaries, nature trails, camp grounds and museums and exhibits centered on everything nature.