I was sitting at O-Ku, a sushi restaurant in Jax Beach, with a table full of Floridians claiming with confidence bordering on arrogance that St. Augustine was the oldest city in the US. I have spent enough time with Floridians to know that this level of confidence is usually rooted in absolutely nothing. "They're really acting like Jamestown doesn't exist..." I thought to myself.

Before dropping the Jamestown bomb, I whipped out my phone and went straight to google just to double check. Can you imagine the lies people got away with before google???? Just saying anything, standing on completely baseless business. You'd have to go to the library the next day just to fact check someone ahahaha that'd be brutal.

Anyways, you can see where this is going. I was completely wrong. St. Augustine (1565) is high stepping into the endzone with being the oldest city in the US. A full 42 years before Jamestown, VA. That one hurt. I checked like 8 different sources looking for anything to dispute the truth. That's the thing about the truth though, it's always shining through.

We went to St. Augustine the next morning, and Castillo de San Marcos is the city's heartbeat. It is the oldest masonry fort in the continental United States. The Castillo is in the shape of a star and made of a stone called coquina, which is Spanish for "small shells." No excuse just produce.

After paying the $15 dollar entry fee, we walked in and you can immediately feel some sort of energy. At least I can, I'm a nut though. It's almost like a deep reverence for generations past that put their lives on the line in wars and battles so I could be sitting in this coffee shop chillin, with my only stresser being if they put almond milk in my latte instead of oat milk smh.

At every corner of the star, there is a little infographic detailing something that happened in that very spot all those years ago. In essentially every paragraph, they sneak in some variation of "the fort walls were never breached" ahahaha you can't help but respect that, sometimes you just gotta let em know! Closed mouth don't get fed!

All in all, The Castillo is a mus-- WAIT. YOU HAVEN'T BEEN TO THE OLDEST CITY IN THE US?!?!?! Y'ALL STILL GOING TO JAMESTOWN?!?!?! COULDN'T BE ME!!!!!!!!

Thank you, St. Augustine. Thank you, Google.

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