Things to do / Travel Guide
The tours in northeast Florida and the Panhandle are usually nature and marine-based or history-based. You'll learn all about the region's environment, animals, and scenery, and be drawn in to the fascinating history of local events and buildings.
Tours in Daytona Beach
Everyone loves a duck tour! And if you don't yet know what a duck tour is, you'll love it when you try it. The “duck” is an augmented bus that can travel on roads, sand, and in the water. Experience Daytona Beach without the usual barrier of the waterline. The TrolleyBoat Tours company provides fun and witty explanations of the historic and beautiful districts of the city, and then takes you for a dip into Halifax River to search for dolphins and manatees. The tour costs around $30 per person, and it departs every two hours or so from 10:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m.
Tours in St. Augustine
There are some entertaining marine tours in St. Augustine, as well. These fun and detailed tours are presented aboard 120-person boats. You get to see many of St. Augustine's attractions from the water, which, when the city was more prominent, was a very common way of seeing them. The tours departs from Municipal Marina, which is south of the Bridge of the Lions.
There are plenty of walking tours in St. Augustine, the goal of which are to give the tourist a good idea of the city's history, its historical and current significance, and to point out cool landmarks along the way. Take advantage of the city's living museum, the Colonial Spanish Quarter, which offers hands-on tours that depart quite often during the day.
You can also choose to take a trolley tour to see the city's major tourist locations. There are approximately 20 stops on the route, and you can get on and off the circuiting trolley as many times as you'd like over the course of a day. Friendly guides give explanations throughout the trolley ride.
Tours on the St. Johns River
If you're looking for an excellent and relaxing way to learn about the St. Johns River, an American Heritage River, take a river eco-tour on an authentic side-wheel paddleboat. Would you like to see a sleepy alligator in the noonday sun, or a family of manatees cooling under a saw palmetto? The paddleboat guides will point out these animals and more as you cruise along on the boat. Touring on the slow-moving, north-flowing St. Johns River is an excellent way to connect and commune with nature. Most of these tours depart around the area of Lake Beresford and Deland, which you can reach via a 20-mile trip on I-4.
Tours on Amelia Island
A fun nighttime activity with kids on Amelia Island is taking a ghost tour. Ghosts have historically seemed to enjoy this island's haunts - the phenomenon probably has to do with the Amelia's relative isolation, her old-time architecture, and the (if not a bit overly-so) colorful imagination of her inhabitants. Tour guides combine historical tales with tales of the supernatural to spin a fascinating (though slightly scary) evening all around Fernandina Beach. These Ghost Tours of Amelia Island depart at the ticket booth at the corner of 8th Street and Ash Street on Saturday and Sunday evenings at 8 p.m.
Tours on the Nature Coast
On the Nature Coast there are plenty of opportunities to learn all about the area's most-loved host: the manatee. Many of the area's tours, be they in the Chiefland, on Cedar Key, or further south on Crystal River, feature manatee-spotting tours on boats. You can photograph from a safe distance, or get up close to “swim with a manatee.”
Tours in Tallahassee and Pensacola
These two nice-sized and historical cities offer tours of their downtown areas. In Tallahassee one popular favorite is Tours with a Southern Accent, which offers two-hour morning tours beginning at 10:00 a.m. and three-and-a-half-hour tours at 1:00 p.m. every day. The topics of these tours differ according to the day, but they generally cover Tallahassee and the outlying areas such as Monticello, Quincy, and the more marshy north.
Pensacola boasts a historical area whose richness is second only to St. Augustine. The Historic Pensacola Village offers two-hour walking tours of the houses, museums, and other buildings on the premises. Most of the structures in the Village date to before the year 1900, and some to before 1800. The tours depart twice a day - once in the late morning and once in the early afternoon - from the ticket office at the Tivoli House, 205 Zaragoza Street.
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