Nights of Lights festival kicks off in St. Augustine

SAINT AUGUSTINE, Fla. — Not just one, but two countdowns made for the kickoff of the 29th annual Nights of Lights in St. Augustine.

“It’s one of our favorite things to do, we were very much looking forward to it,” Mark Young said.

A sea of people took over downtown kicking off the holiday season, the festival brings over 3 million lights to the area. It also brought Amanda Cox and her family out, who drove from Palm Coast to see this for the first time.

“It’s awesome I enjoyed the trees more than that tree,” she said when describing all the lights.

Families were getting in the spirit all throughout the night.

“We love doing stuff with our kids, so we try to get out,” Marshayla Thomas said.

While it’s a sight to see, temperatures were pretty cold. However, it wasn’t going to matter what it was like outside because it wasn’t steering people away from seeing the Nights of Lights.

“I’ve got my vest sweater on so I’m ready for it,” Young said.

“I’m formerly from Boston and this is like hot,” Jack McDormand said.

“I’m used to this weather, so this isn’t technically cold I guess but I didn’t move here to be cold and this is cold to me,” Cox said.

The festival comes after both Hurricane Ian and Tropical Storm Nicole flooded the downtown area. A spokesperson for the City of St. Augustine said to the crowd they were a bit nervous about being able to pull this together after Nicole but said with a lot of support they made it happen. Those who showed up today called the turnaround impressive.

“Not just experiencing that but just bouncing back from something like that is just amazing and I give them props for being able to come back and pull this off,” Cox said.

Nights of Lights will be running until January 31.

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