Southeast
🏖️ Delaware
📍 Rehoboth Beach · United States
📍 Rehoboth Beach · United States
Delaware hosts Philadelphia matches at the 2026 FIFA World Cup — June 11 to July 19, 2026.
View World Cup City Guide →🏛 Rehoboth Beach Boardwalk
Delaware is America's first state — the first to ratify the US Constitution on December 7, 1787 — and its smallest by area (second to Rhode Island), covering just 1,949 square miles. Despite its size, it offers a compelling combination of Atlantic beach culture, colonial heritage, world-class gardens, and the practical advantage of no sales tax that draws shoppers and weekenders from Washington DC, Philadelphia, and Baltimore in significant numbers.
Rehoboth Beach is Delaware's crown jewel — a welcoming, family-friendly resort town that calls itself the 'Nation's Summer Capital' for the contingent of Washington DC politicians, lobbyists, and federal workers who summer there. The mile-long boardwalk, lined with taffy shops, ice cream parlors, and casual seafood restaurants, is classic East Coast beach culture at its most wholesome. Dewey Beach immediately south offers a livelier nightlife scene. Bethany Beach and Fenwick Island to the south are quieter family destinations. The entire Delaware coast benefits from excellent state park infrastructure: Cape Henlopen State Park, preserving 4,000 acres of dunes, maritime forest, and 3 miles of Atlantic beach, is one of the Mid-Atlantic's finest beach parks.
Lewes, at the entrance to Delaware Bay, is one of the region's most historically layered small towns — founded by Dutch explorers in 1631 and later settled by English colonists, it preserves the Zwaanendael Museum (a replica of the town hall of Hoorn, Netherlands), colonial-era buildings, and a waterfront lined with skipjacks and oyster boats. The Cape May-Lewes Ferry connects to New Jersey's Cape May, creating a natural loop for Mid-Atlantic coastal road trips. Lewes Beach and Gordon's Pond Trail in Cape Henlopen are excellent early morning and offseason destinations.
The Brandywine Valley, in northern Delaware, is one of America's great garden landscapes — Longwood Gardens (Pierre du Pont's extraordinary horticultural estate, 1,077 acres with 4.5 acres of heated conservatories) and the Winterthur Museum (Henry Francis du Pont's collection of American decorative arts in a 175-room mansion surrounded by 60 acres of naturalistic garden) are world-class in every sense. The du Pont family's industrial and philanthropic influence shaped Delaware profoundly, and exploring it reveals a surprisingly rich cultural legacy in America's smallest state.
Mid-Atlantic beach-goers who want to escape the crowds of the Outer Banks and Cape Cod, garden enthusiasts, and anyone driving the coastal circuit between the DC area and New Jersey.
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