Experience the best of Cape May

Cape May sits at the southern end of New Jersey, where Delaware Bay meets the Atlantic, and is one of the oldest seaside resorts in the United States. A fire in 1878 swept the town and it was rebuilt in a Victorian style, so that hundreds of painted wooden houses with gingerbread trim, towers and wraparound porches now give the whole town the status of a National Historic Landmark. The Washington Street Mall is a pedestrian street of shops and cafés.

The Cape May Lighthouse of 1859 has 199 steps to the top, and Cape May Point State Park has a hawk-watching platform; in autumn raptors, songbirds and monarch butterflies funnel through the point on their way south, making it a renowned birdwatching site. At Sunset Beach the concrete hull of the Atlantus, a ship built of concrete in 1918, lies in the shallows. Wildwood's boardwalk is to the north, and a ferry crosses to Lewes, Delaware.

Seafood, local wine, fudge and salt water taffy are the town's treats. Peak summer is lively, off-season weekends are calm, and the Victorian houses are lit and decorated in December.