Meredith, NH

A classic neighborhood diner on Plymouth Street that has fed Meredith locals every morning since 1991, earning its reputation on the red flannel hash — a house-made beet-and-corned-beef creation that regulars treat as a non-negotiable order. The omelettes are enormous, the daily specials run to prime rib and chicken pot pie at dinner, and the clientele is a reliable cross-section of the year-round community.

A Lakes Region institution in continuous operation since 1954 that treats every day like Thanksgiving — the turkey dinners with gravy, stuffing, and cranberry sauce are what people drive from Manchester for, and the from-scratch kitchen and in-house bakery keep everything properly homemade. The room seats 500 and feels like a proper New England event.

A lively outdoor waterfront restaurant and Tiki bar right on Lake Winnipesaukee where you can tie up your boat at the dock before sitting down to lobster rolls, fried seafood plates, and cold drinks with your feet in the sand. The atmosphere is unambiguously summer-on-the-lake — kids running around, kayaks in the water, live music some evenings — and that is precisely the point.

A nationally recognized boutique winery on Main Street crafting wines, meads, and ciders entirely from New Hampshire-sourced fruit and raw honey — and doing it well enough to be named one of Food and Wine Magazine's 500 Best Wineries in America. The kitchen turns out farm-to-table plates under a chef who treats the food as seriously as the wines, and the Loft hosts intimate live music concerts Thursday through Saturday.

A Main Street Italian institution in the Mill Falls complex that has anchored Meredith's dining scene for years with wood-oven pizza, house-made pasta, and live entertainment most nights of the week. The room is large and convivial, the menu covers everything from wood-fired margheritas to proper veal and pasta dishes, and the live music program is the most consistent in town.

The breakfast restaurant at Church Landing's lakeside resort complex, with a wood-beam dining room and water views that make it the most pleasant morning meal in Meredith. The menu covers all the New England classics — eggs benedict, buttermilk pancakes, Vermont-style French toast — and the service is reliably warm even with a full house. Dinner service adds American steakhouse-style mains.

The upscale dining room in the Bay Point resort complex, overlooking Lake Winnipesaukee with Italian-American fine-dining plates and a wine cellar that leans properly European. The setting is the most romantic in Meredith — candlelit room, water outside the window, a menu that moves from Vermont cheese plates to linguini alle vongole and grilled branzino. Worth the reservation on a clear evening.

A working farm on Quarry Road that has been selling Meredith-grown produce to the Lakes Region since 1975, now expanded into a full farm stand and seasonal experience with a corn maze, hayrides, pick-your-own berries, cider-and-donut weekends, and a petting zoo in fall. The cinnamon donuts are made fresh and the apple cider is pressed on site — a genuine taste of old-school New England farm culture.

A 3.3-mile loop near Center Harbor that climbs steadily through hardwood forest to a fire tower at the summit of Red Hill, with panoramic views of both Lake Winnipesaukee and Squam Lake on the way up — two of New England's most spectacular lakes visible from a single lookout. The trail passes the ruins of the Horne family homestead and is rated 4.7 stars by more than 1,800 hikers.

A 763-acre town forest with a 3.7-mile loop trail through wetlands, beaver ponds, and mixed hardwood forest, crossing a bog bridge beside an active beaver dam and passing the ruins of an 1840 mill. The forest feels genuinely wild for a community trail — osprey work the pond edges, and the beaver engineering visible from the trail is substantial enough to be interesting to all ages.

A 90-minute scenic train journey departing from Meredith depot along the western shore of Lake Winnipesaukee to Weirs Beach in restored early 1900s coaches, with water views for most of the route and the option to disembark at Weirs Beach for the M/S Mount Washington cruise back. The Rail and Sail combination is the most efficient way to see the lake from both land and water.

A shoreside walking path that connects Hesky Park and Scenic Park along Meredith Bay, weaving through the public waterfront between the Mill Falls Marketplace and the town's sandy beach areas. It is the right 30-minute walk for orienting yourself to the town, and the Sculpture Walk pieces placed along the route make it more than just a lakeside stroll.

A 230-foot excursion ship that has been cruising Lake Winnipesaukee since 1872 — the flagship of the fleet and the most iconic way to experience the lake. Scenic daytime cruises visit five ports around the lake; sunset dinner dance cruises feature live bands and a full dinner service on the water. The ship picks up passengers at Meredith on alternating days.

The most intimate concert venue in the Lakes Region operates inside The Loft at Hermit Woods Winery on Main Street — a listening-room space that brings in surprising regional and national acts for seated performances on Thursday through Saturday evenings. Tickets are sold alongside wine and food, and the overall experience is much closer to a private house concert than a bar show.

Guided pontoon boat tours on Squam Lake departing from the Science Center in Holderness, where naturalist guides locate nesting common loons, bald eagles, and osprey on the same lake used as a setting for On Golden Pond. The combination of the wildlife expertise and the exceptionally clear Squam Lake water makes this one of the most satisfying wildlife experiences in the White Mountains region.

The only restaurant in Meredith with live music most nights of the week, running a rotating program of regional acts covering everything from folk and acoustic sets to high-energy cover bands. The Mill Falls location makes it easy to drop in after a Sculpture Walk or pre-dinner drinks, and the music is loud enough to be fun without drowning out the table conversation.

Meredith's most beloved seasonal attraction runs September through October, with a corn maze, horse-drawn hayrides, a petting zoo, pick-your-own pumpkins, and the farm stand's famous apple cider pressed on site with fresh cinnamon donuts made to order. The farm sits on Quarry Road north of town, and the fall programming draws Lakes Region families year after year for the experience as much as the produce.

A beautifully restored 19th-century mill complex right in the center of Meredith village, now hosting the town's most concentrated cluster of restaurants, boutique shops, and the waterfall that gave the complex its name — still visible from the walkways. The Sculpture Walk routes through the marketplace grounds, and the multiple restaurants make it a natural starting point for an evening in Meredith.

A year-round outdoor sculpture exhibition that has placed 30-plus works of art along Main Street, the Mill Falls Marketplace walkways, and the lakefront parks at Hesky and Scenic Parks — each piece tagged with artist name, hometown, and medium. The whole circuit takes about 30 minutes on foot and covers the most scenic stretch of Meredith Bay with water views throughout.

A 200-acre wildlife education center in Holderness on the shores of Squam Lake — the lake made famous by the film On Golden Pond — with a live animal exhibit trail through native forest featuring black bears, mountain lions, otters, raptors, and deer, most of them permanently resident after being orphaned or injured. Guided boat tours on Squam Lake depart from the center and spot nesting loons and bald eagles.

New Hampshire's largest lake at 72 square miles, with more than 300 islands, a 182-mile shoreline, and water clear enough to see the bottom in the shallows — the defining natural feature of the entire Lakes Region. From Meredith's public boat launch and the Mill Falls waterfront, the bay view is especially dramatic at dusk, and the lake is open for public swimming, kayaking, and fishing throughout the warm months.

The most classically retro lakeside resort community on Lake Winnipesaukee — a few miles from Meredith along the western shore — with an arcade, a sandy public beach, a boardwalk, and the docks where the M/S Mount Washington and the Winnipesaukee Scenic Railroad both stop. It is unapologetically old-fashioned New England beach culture and entirely charming for it.