As you stroll around the town - possibly aided by the self-guided walking tour issued by the Historic Edenton Visitor Center (April-Oct Mon-Sat 9am-5pm, Sun 1-5pm; Nov-March Tues-Sat 10am-4pm, Sun 1-4pm; $3-5; tel 252/482-2637; guided tours available, call ahead for times) - you'll come across an exceptional number of colonial and pre-Civil War houses , and the magnificent wooden Cupola House; St Paul's Parish Church and the Georgian Chowan County Courthouse overlooking the waterfront are fine mid-eighteenth-century structures. The main road, Broad Street , is also interesting in an offbeat way, with its Victorian facades, old-fashioned drugstores selling home-mixed sodas, and Fifties chrome signs.

A narrated slide show at the visitor center covers colonial history well, but is less explicit about slavery. There's no mention of the remarkable Harriet Jacobs , a runaway slave who hid for seven years in her grandmother's attic. She finally escaped to the North through such ruses as disguising herself as a male sailor, and was eventually reunited in Boston with the two children she had had by a white man in Edenton. She wrote this amazing story as Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl , one of the most famous published slave narratives of the nineteenth century. None of the buildings mentioned in the book is still standing, but the visitor center provides walking and trolley tours to give you an idea of where places were. A map published by the Harvard University Press (1987) provides information on some historic sites.

If you like peace and quiet, Edenton is not a bad base for explorations of the coast. Luxurious B&Bs include the Trestle House Inn , 632 Soundside Rd (tel 252/482-2282, ; $100-130), and the bizarre Granville Queen Themed Inn , 108 S Granville St (tel 252/482-5296 ; $75-100/$130-160), in which every room is done out on a "queen" theme - ask for the Egyptian Queen, with its resident sphinxes. You won't need to eat for the rest of the day after their five-course breakfast. A reliable budget motel is the Coach House , 919 N Broad St (tel 252/482-2107; $35-50). For eating , the Creekside Restaurant & Bar , 406 W Queen St (tel 252/482-0118), has a good, varied menu. For Carolina pit-cooked barbecue try Lane's Family BBQ and Seafood , 421 E Church St (tel 252/482-4008). Closer to the water, there is the fishy Waterman's Grill , 427 S Broad St (tel 252/482-7733).