Annapolis Named One of Best Towns in America

Sailing along the picturesque waterfront, fabulous coffee shops, and fresh-caught Maryland blue crabs – Annapolis has it all.

The capital city win bragging rights over other East Coast cities – including New York City and Bar Harbor, Maine – by landing at No. 16 OUTSIDE magazine’s The 16 Best Places to Live in America: 2015 list.

Readers began voting in May for their favorite towns at OUTSIDE Online, winnowing an initial bracket of 60 towns down to the final 16 towns featured in the September 2015 issue.

Annapolis beat out East region contenders that included New Haven, CT; Northampton, MA; Pittsburgh, PA; Portsmouth, NH; Providence, RI; Red Bank, NJ; and New York, NY.

Here’s how the magazine describes Annapolis:

To see Annapolis shine, come on a Wednesday evening in the summer, when the weekly sailboat race draws more than 100 boats to the harbor. After the race, the locals party like, well, sailors. You’ll find crews talking smack over the night’s race footage at the Boatyard Bar and Grill. But you don’t have to sail to get on the water: in the spring, kayakers and paddleboarders float Spa Creek. On land, runners tackle the three-mile trail to the old Navy radio transmission towers on Greenbury Point. With some 39,000 residents, Annapolis is a manageable city. Downtown, you’ll run into midshipmen from the U.S. Naval Academy and students from St. John’s College discussing Kant at City Dock Coffee.

While it’s not cheap, you can buy a home with bay views for under $400,000, and jobs—many in tourism and the military—are plentiful. It can get touristy on peak weekends, but locals know to head for Wild Country Seafood, in an alley behind a maritime museum. They’ll share picnic tables and tuck into platters of Maryland blue crab, freshly caught that morning by the father-son duo who run the joint.

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• America’s Best Towns for the Holidays Includes Annapolis

»»What do you love most about Annapolis? Tell us in comments.

The magazine editors said the honors went to “the kind of place with top-notch restaurants, vibrant farmers’ markets, friendly neighborhoods, and unparalleled access to hiking and biking trails. In short, the perfect jumping-off point for adventure.”