Wilmington: so close, yet so far away. If you typically treat Delaware’s largest city as the driving equivalent of flyover country, it’s time to rethink that. Wilmington is more than banks and Bidens, with beautiful greenspaces, three waterfronts, and a wealth of historic buildings now reborn as restaurants, theaters and hotels. This renaissance has been building over the last decade, and there’s now more than enough to fill a spring weekend getaway that feels like a home-away-from-home. If you time the I-95 South traffic right, you can get there in 40 minutes. Start the car, or hell, call an Uber.
Fuel: Bean Head Coffee Bar
Bean Head Coffee Bar, located right off Wilmington’s 11th Street exit of 95, brings that theatricality to the daytime with a smoked hazelnut latte. Stop at this cool redbrick cafe on your way into town for their signature drink—they have all the usual hot and iced espresso bevs, too—and a cinnamon roll or hunk of coconut cake.
Stay: The Quoin
Fishtown, take note: The Quoin is from the same team at Method Co. Located in an 1885 Frank Furness-designed bank, this 24-room boutique hotel blends preserved historic bones with midcentury seating and patterned wallpaper. Book one of the upper-level rooms for vaulted ceilings and original arched windows.
Sail: Kalmar Nyckel
Kalmar Nykel landed in what would become Wilmington, marking the first European settlement in the Delaware Valley. The original Nykel ship hasn’t existed for centuries, but a nonprofit commissioned and launched a faithful recreation of this splendid tall ship, which is docked at the Copeland Maritime Center on the Christiana River when she’s not out sailing. That’s right — this three-masted vessel is no sedentary museum. She’s seaworthy, offering 90-minute river cruises on the second, third, and fourth Saturdays in May and select dates in June and July.
Visit: Nemours Estate
Nemours Estate, 15 minutes from downtown. Sign up for a guided tour (or maybe a forest bath with a nature therapist), or explore the estate’s Versailles-inspired gardens and gilded chateau independently. Just don’t miss the Chauffer’s Garage, whose vintage auto collection includes two Rolls-Royces.
Drink: Simmer Down
Simmer Down beckons with tufted camel banquettes, hand-painted murals and amber light radiating from fringed lamps. The lounge spreads out beneath barreled brick ceilings, setting a stage for brown butter-washed bourbon Old Fashioneds, fluffy magenta Clover Clubs and the Velvet Goose, a blend of mezcal, velvet falernum, creme de violette and dry vermouth anointed with black-lemon bitters.
See: The Queen
