The most walkable small towns in America

All 80 towns on the Feels Like Europe list are walkable, because walkability is one of the five points a town has to pass to get on it. The test is plain: once you arrive, nobody in the group has to drive again. A town where the good dinner is a 15-minute drive from the good hotel does not qualify, however pretty it is.

Last updated 21 September 2026. Free to cite with a link.

Key takeaways

• 80 towns across 33 states meet a strict walkability test: park once, walk all weekend.
• Walkability here is pass or fail, not a score out of 100.
• The reason these towns are walkable is that most were laid out before cars, by settlers who

built the way they had at home in Europe.

• Walkability is the point groups feel most, because it removes the designated driver problem from

a weekend built around dinners and tastings.

Why these towns are walkable and newer towns are not

The towns on this list were built around a main street, a church and a market square, in the decades before anyone planned for parking. Swiss settlers in Wisconsin, Dutch farmers in Washington, Norwegians in Minnesota: they built the shape of town they knew. That shape puts the hotel, the bakery, the dinner and the shops within a few hundred yards of each other.

A town built after 1950 puts them on a strip, four minutes apart by car. That is the difference, and no amount of charm fixes it.

What we mean by walkable

Four things, all of which have to be true:

1. The stays are in the walkable core, not on a highway outside it. 2. Dinner is a walk from the room, at night, in the dark, in shoes you would wear to dinner. 3. The shops and the tastings are on the same few streets. 4. The one thing worth driving to is optional, not the centrepiece of the weekend.

Where a town fails one of these, the handbook says so in the plan rather than pretending.

Every decision, already made for you

Where to stay, where to eat, what to do, and a ready made 48 hour plan for every town. Pick one, send it to the group, go.

See the handbookOne time payment. Love it or full refund.

The towns

Every town on the Feels Like Europe Index passes. The full table with each town's European parallel, season and budget is there.

The full weekend plan for each town is in The Girls' Trip Handbook.

Frequently asked questions