Ghent Where the Bungalows Keep Their Secrets

Ghent is Norfolk's most walkable neighborhood, a grid of early-20th-century bungalows and colonials centered on Colley Avenue and 21st Street, where the trees are old enough to form a canopy and the dogs outnumber the parking meters. I start at Cure Coffeehouse on Colley, where the espresso is serious and the crowd is grad students and Navy officers and young parents whose strollers are more expensive than my first car.

The Naro Expanded Cinema on Colley is an art-house theater that has been showing independent films since 1936, and its neon marquee is the neighborhood's heartbeat — a reminder that Ghent valued culture before culture was a marketing strategy. Two blocks south, The Birch serves cocktails with the craftsmanship of a place that considers ice a design element, and the candlelit interior makes everyone look better than they deserve to on a Tuesday.

The residential streets between Colley and the Hague inlet are where Ghent earns its charm. The houses are brick and clapboard, porches deep enough for rocking chairs, and the gardens overflow with azaleas in spring and the determined greenery of a Southern neighborhood that takes its landscaping personally. The Hague itself — a tidal inlet of the Elizabeth River — catches the afternoon light in a way that makes the row of houses along its banks look like a watercolor that hasn't committed to being finished.

Insider tip: Walk to the Chrysler Museum (free, always) at the north end of the Hague. The glass studio out back does live glassblowing demonstrations, and watching molten glass become art in front of your eyes is the best free entertainment in Virginia.