Experience the best of Annapolis

Annapolis lies where the Severn River meets Chesapeake Bay, and its centre still has the narrow, brick-paved streets and Georgian houses of a colonial port. The Maryland State House, completed in 1779, is the oldest state capitol in continuous legislative use, and in 1783 George Washington resigned his army commission there. The US Naval Academy, founded in 1845, has a campus of granite halls, with the tomb of John Paul Jones in its chapel crypt.

City Dock, where boats nose into a narrow inlet nicknamed Ego Alley, is the town's meeting place, and a memorial there commemorates Kunta Kinte, whose arrival in Annapolis in 1767 appears in Alex Haley's Roots. The town calls itself the sailing capital of the United States, and the harbour fills with masts. Across Spa Creek, Eastport has a maritime museum, the Bay Bridge leads to the Eastern Shore, Baltimore lies about 40 kilometres to the north and Washington about 50 to the west.

Blue crabs steamed with Old Bay seasoning and cracked with a mallet at paper-covered tables are the local ritual, with crab cakes, oysters, rockfish and Smith Island cake, a many-layered dessert. Summers are humid, the sailing season is long, and the harbour is quiet in winter.