Experience the best of Norfolk

Norfolk stands where the Elizabeth River meets Chesapeake Bay in the Hampton Roads region of south-eastern Virginia, and is the home of Naval Station Norfolk, the largest naval base in the world. Nauticus, a maritime museum on the downtown waterfront, is moored beside the battleship USS Wisconsin, and ferries cross the river to Portsmouth.

The Chrysler Museum of Art holds a large glass collection, and the Norfolk Botanical Garden is famed for its azaleas. St Paul's Church, from 1739, was the only building to survive the burning of the town in 1776, and a cannonball is still lodged in its wall. The MacArthur Memorial honours the general. Ocean View has beaches on the bay, Virginia Beach lies about 30 kilometres east, and Williamsburg and Jamestown lie up the peninsula to the north-west.

Chesapeake seafood is the local pride: oysters, crab cakes and Smithfield ham biscuits, with peanut soup and Brunswick stew in old-fashioned restaurants. The climate is mild, sailing fills the bay in summer, azaleas flower in spring, and the humid heat of July and August gives way to a long, gentle autumn.