The city made adjustments this year<\/a> after last season\u2019s traffic gridlock issues to improve the experience for both visitors and residents.<\/p>\nDavid Birchim, city manager of St. Augustine, said, \u201cThe event was safer and more enjoyable for our visitors and for our residents. It really went great.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite being the final weekend, crowds are still coming out to see the lights. A local couple from Ponte Vedra shared their experience.<\/p>\n
Deb Bernatt, a Ponte Vedra resident, said, \u201cIt\u2019s been really, really crowded other years and it\u2019s been crazy. So we thought, since this year, it\u2019s nice, it has nice weather and everything like that, let\u2019s just wait and come down when it\u2019s not so crazy busy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rose and her husband visited from Miami. They have been to St. Augustine before, but not during Christmas. Her friend visited Nights of Lights last weekend and insisted she go.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love Christmas, and I love all kinds of lights, you know,\u201d she said. \u201cSo that\u2019s why I decide, you now, I told my husband, you know, let\u2019s just give it a try.\u201d<\/p>\n
The city acknowledges there is still room for improvement in future years.<\/p>\n
David Birchim noted, \u201cWell, we learned a lot of lessons this year. We realized that we have deficiencies in restrooms, for example. We know, have a much better idea of how to manage large crowds of pedestrians, although that\u2019s what we do a lot in St. Augustine. We still saw illegal vendors coming into town during these peak periods that we had a hard time managing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Birchim hopes visitors had a good time and that they keep coming back. Rose plans to return at the height of the holiday season.<\/p>\n
\u201cDuring Christmas, I would love to be here to see when they light the tree. I like to bring my son and daughter, you know, as a family,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
For those who haven\u2019t visited yet, the event officially ends on January 11.<\/p>\n
Bernatt added, \u201cPeople go to Europe and they go to all the Christmas markets and things, but we have something here that takes us about a half an hour to get to and that\u2019s awesome.\u201d<\/p>\n
Free shuttles are still running this weekend to help visitors get to and from the event. The city\u2019s website<\/a> has more information, and visitors can also download the Nights of Lights app before they go.<\/p>\nCopyright 2026 by WJXT News4JAX – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. \u2013 St. Augustine\u2019s Nights of Lights is entering its final weekend, giving visitors one last…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":113899,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117,57753,2663,5902],"class_list":["post-113898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-nights-of-lights","tag-st-augustine","tag-st-johns-county"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113898\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}