St. Augustine gets spotlight on PBS travel show 'Samantha Brown's Places to Love'

Samantha Brown knows a good travel destination when she sees one, and St. Augustine checks all the boxes for her.

Brown is host of the PBS travel show, “Samantha Brown's Places to Love.” A St. Augustine episode airs at 11 a.m. Saturday on Jacksonville’s WJCT. She spent four days exploring the city, its waters and its beaches last May to tape the episode. She had visited the city before, about 20 years ago, but this is the first time she’d done a show about St. Augustine.

Here are five things she loved about her visit.

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The history

St. Augustine is widely promoted as the oldest city in America, so that was an obvious place to start with the show. She visited the Castillo de San Marcos National Monument in the heart of the city’s historic district, speaking with park rangers about its time under Spanish rule, when escaped slaves who reached the fort were granted Spanish citizenship.  She visited Fort Mose Historic State Park, site of the first legally sanctioned free African settlement.

She also spent time learning about St. Augustine’s pivotal role in the Civil Rights movement.

“The rich colonial history is just the beginning,” Brown said. “For me, it’s the real entry point for learning the city.”

The nature

Brown has done previous episodes of “Places to Love” about the Naples area, the Florida Keys, Miami and Fort Meyers.

“Whenever I do Florida, I always try to find the people who are trying to protect its beauty,” she said.

That led her to take a St. Augustine Eco Tours trip on of Matanzas Bay, learning about what’s at stake and what’s being done to protect the fragile ecosystem.

The unexpected

With this episode, she said, she wanted to show visitors that there’s more to St. Augustine than just the “oldest city” thing.

“You go to St. Augustine and there’s a lot of travelers there,” she said. “It’s nice to get away from us and support local establishments.”

On the show, she visits Urban Asado, which now has a location on Riberia Street in St. Augustine but was operating as a pop-up when she visited. The company makes high-end barbecue grills and now has a restaurant.

She also talks with photographer Lenny Foster, who operates Gallery One Forty Four on King Street, to learn more about the role St. Augustine and Martin Luther King Jr. played in the Civil Rights struggle, something she said she was never taught in school.

Brown said she was surprised by the diversity she found in St. Augustine, racial, cultural and otherwise. “It is the most diverse city I’ve ever been to in Florida.”

The beaches

When travelers think of Florida, beaches are one of the first things that come to mind. For this episode, she visits the Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve, which has miles of undeveloped beachfront between St. Augustine and Ponte Vedra Beach. She hunted for shark teeth with Rob and Chris Taylor, who live in St. Augustine and run the 2TravelDads blog aimed at LGBTQ family travelers.

The food

In addition to Urban Asado, Brown visits St. Augustine’s Llama Restaurant, which specializes in Peruvian food. She sits down with chef Marcel Vizcarra, who trained at Peru’s top culinary school, in the Anastasia Boulevard eatery. “They are adventurous, they are fun, they are delicious,” she said. “It’s a really great dinner.”

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Samantha Brown's PBS travel show spotlights St. Augustine, Florida