“It’s a business doing pleasure with you,” declares leather craftsman Dan Holiday, whether you shop or not in his studio on America’s oldest street in St. Augustine.

He’s all about the pleasure part, shaping vegetable-tanned leather into soft handbags or sharkskin into belts, and meeting people walking on the brick street built in 1565.

Horses clomp by too, with carriage drivers telling their passengers tales of this Florida city founded by the Spanish, invaded by the British and chosen by Minorcan people fleeing New Smyrna in 1777. Florida became America’s 27th state in 1845.

That carriage ride is fun, but making friends with Holiday and his neighbors on this two-block street requires strolling. Carefully. This is an old street, really old, so can’t be expected to be smooth and even.

Aviles (Aah ve lis is the way to say it) keeps to itself between bustling, touristy King Street and community-quiet Bridge Street that no longer leads to a bridge but sports a Catholic school. You could miss these bricks and their artisans if too caught up in the other spectacular sights of St. Augustine.

Spending all day, and then popping back in the next day is a better plan.

Quiet might be what some Aviles Street residents prefer; seems the best time to catch the retired nuns is 7 a.m. en route to mass at the Cathedral-Basilica on the next block.

I didn’t get to Mass on my February visit to St. Augustine, but I heard harps.

Eavesdropping outside the window of Harp Ways where harpist Mary Jane Ballou was either practicing or teaching a lesson — knowing I was standing on an ancient street listing to ancient music seeping from a not-so-well-insulated old building — connected me to many centuries.

Tourism does that when I poke around, and when I stand still and just listen. Here, a holiday can even turn into a hobby by purchasing a 26-string beginner harp called a Harpsicle starting at $295, arranging some lessons on the historic street (first one’s free) and creating enchanting music for the rest of your life. All because of taking a vacation and strolling slowly.

That same kind of slow walking’s also a good idea for the first stroll in a pair of Dan Holiday’s custom sandals. They’re slippery in the beginning.

“Go outside and get some grit in your soles on those brick streets,” he instructed after fitting my size 10 quad A bony feet. “Then come back in and we’ll adjust them again.”

That’s when I discovered the harp, treading carefully along the same street Sir Francis Drake walked five centuries ago. Wonder if he had sandals or boots? Holiday makes boots too, and 18th century style shoes for re-enactors.

The sandals will be enough for me. Never had custom shoes before, and certainly never had someone trace my feet on a manila file folder, muttering as he moved the pencil.

“When did you break that toe?” Didn’t know I had, but certainly recall some big pain meeting up with rungs of rocking chairs. He shaped the straps on my sandals to support that toe and built an arch to hold up the part that always hurts.