Amelia Island & St. Augustine Slow Coast

Two of Florida's most historically intact coastal towns bookend a relaxed two-day circuit — Amelia Island's Victorian shrimp-boat harbor and Atlantic beach on day one, and St. Augustine's 1565 Spanish colonial district on day two. Neither day involves aggressive sightseeing; the appeal of both places is the quality of the built environment and the ease of just walking through it without an agenda. Fernandina Beach still looks like a 19th-century Florida fishing town. St. Augustine still follows the street plan Pedro Menéndez de Avilés laid out in 1565. The drive between them along the A1A coastal highway passes Ponte Vedra and the Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve — one of the least developed stretches of Florida's northeast Atlantic coast.