Ghent Is Norfolk's Best Neighborhood

Cure Coffeehouse on Colley Avenue. Serious espresso. The crowd is grad students, Navy officers, and young parents with strollers more expensive than my first car. That's Ghent in a nutshell — walkable grid of early-20th-century bungalows, old trees forming a canopy, dogs everywhere.

The Naro Expanded Cinema on Colley has been showing independent films since 1936, and its neon marquee is the neighborhood's heartbeat. The Birch two blocks south does cocktails with the craftsmanship of a place that considers ice a design element. Candlelit interior makes everyone look better than they deserve on a Tuesday.

The residential streets between Colley and the Hague inlet are where the charm actually lives — brick and clapboard houses, deep porches, azaleas in spring. Walk to the Chrysler Museum at the north end of the Hague. It's free. The glass studio does live glassblowing demos. Best free entertainment in Virginia.