Pensacola

Mid-afternoon I headed east towards Pensacola, Florida. It is about an hour away. I had no great urge to go there, but I had read that it was a historic city, and it was in Florida, and I had never been there. It is one of the nicest small cities I have ever visited in the States, bright, clean and prosperous. It was founded in 1559 and claims to be the oldest settlement in the USA (take that, Jamestown!). Saint Augustine, on the Atlantic coast, founded in 1565, can lay claim to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in the continental US. After the Spanish initially established themselves in what is now Pensacola with a large contingent of ships and people (1,500) they abandoned the settlement a few years later. The reason was a devastating hurricane. The surviving inhabitants then moved up the Atlantic coast to an island off the Carolinas, but a hurricane found them there, too. After that they gave up. Pensacola has been under the flag of the Spanish, French, British, Confederate States and, of course, the USA. It became part of the nation in 1821 when the Spanish relinquished their claim to Florida. Andrew Jackson was its first Governor and Pensacola its biggest settlement.
Besides the attractive business district there is Pensacola Village, a neighborhood of picturesque clapboard and Victorian style bungalows. I suspect that the apparent prosperity of the town is due to the proximity of a large naval base.
From the downtown area it is only a walk of a few blocks to the harbor. There was this curious looking vessel berthed there, the HOS Achiever. After a bit of investigating on the internet I have discovered that it is an all-purpose delivery vessel, serving off-shore oil rigs and things like that. There is what I guess to be a helicopter landing pad on the front of the vessel. It's the weirdest ship I've ever seen.