A few hours in Annapolis last Sunday. A day of clouds and sun and midshipmen and women in their dress whites. Checking out the boats in Ego Alley, browsing for prints at Creative Impressions, having dinner at Chick and Ruth’s Delly, stopping for scoops at the Annapolis Ice Cream Company.

On the way home, I peer in the window of a real estate office. It’s a stretch, I know, but it’s fun to fantasize. A morning like this one: cool and brisk, a walk along the water, picking up the paper in a coffee shop, strolling home past people and places we would come to know. A touristy town, I know. But underneath it all still a hometown, a small town where all sorts of people jostle together.

Most of all: not the suburbs.