The fam and I are renting a beach house in Rehoboth Beach next week. I’ve never been there before. What are some must-sees and must-eats?
If it helps, our family group will consist of my parents (66 and 65 years old), my brother, his girlfriend, and their daughter (34, 24, 1½ years), my aunt and her daughter (50, 10) and me (31). My girlfriend (32) will be joining us for the weekend.
Thanks for the advice!
we’ve been there a few times and always had a great time.
For food & drink, Dogfish Head brewpub is pretty decent, great beer! Plus they have a distillery so you can buy their own vodka, gin and rum which is very good.
the Summer House restaurant is very good and casual.
the Robin Hood diner is great for breakfast.
Not a fan of Grotto pizza; a little too greasy for me.
Check out Lewes while you’re there. Neat little town.
Cape Henlopen State Park is fantastic; great beaches and less crowded than the boardwalk in Rehoboth. Also the WWII observation towers are pretty cool. It used to be a coastal artillery battery back in the day. Good frisbee golf course too, but not well marked.
I love Rehoboth Beach… Went there for the first time two years ago and then again a year later. Going a third time in August. I’ve got to say, it’s one of my favorite places in this country.
As said before, go to the Dogfish head brewpub. The beer is amazing and I am quite partial to their food as well. (It’s a little ways down Rehoboth ave. but it is easily walkable from the boardwalk)
I’m also rather partial to Claws Restaurant. Good prices on good seafood.
Also as said before, Cape Henlopen State Park is a very nice area. Good for walking without the crowds.
Tons of other things you should see and do but I genuinely can’t recall what they are right now.
I’m not sure how the crowds are there in June/July but if they are anything like they are in August then you should find a parking space and walk everywhere from then on. The traffic is horrendous, there’s a ton of pedestrians and there seems to be one parking space for every 10 cars during the day.
There’s not a lot of real must-see’s and must-eat’s in Rehoboth Beach… it’s basically just a quiet little place. However, as others have said, the Robin Hood Diner and Claws are good… Dogfish Head is good but not much atmosphere. We also like Sammy’s Kitchen for breakfast and Go Fish! (British style fish and chips) for lunch. If you have kids or are just a kid at heart, Funland (at the south end of the boardwalk) is a necessity.
If you go to the beach in the morning, you can see porpoises just offshore. Also, there’s a colony of parrots (?) somewhere. I was taking a walk one morning and saw one fly by, much to my surprise/suspicion of hallucination.
This is a bit of a road trip, 37 miles according to Google maps. Assateague Island begins just south of Ocean City, Maryland and extends to Chincoteague, VA. There is a bridge to it a few miles south of Ocean City that leads to a state park and a national seashore park. The main reason to go is the population of wild horses, although the beach is nice and not crowded.
Thanks for the advice all. I’m definitely looking forward to the Dogfish Head Pub, if the pub is anything like Dogfish Head beer. 
This worries me. Is the area packed with people? I went to the Outer Banks last year and it was a very quiet little town. I was hoping Rehoboth was more like OBX and less like Ocean City.
It is much more like OBX than Ocean City. I go to Ocean City almost every summer, and it is ten miles of crowdedness. Rehoboth is not sleepy and deserted, but it is not wall to wall people either. My wife likes to shop there, and we have always been able to find a parking place without much trouble. I have not experienced what geneb describes at all.
There are definitely significantly less people than at Ocean City, but it can get crowded out on the beach. It’s much more of an actual town than OC, which is primarily just a long strip of beach.
I second the recommendation of visiting Lewes, which is the next town north of Rehoboth. It’s much, much more of the quiet little town that OBX is, and it has two nice quiet beaches, one on the Atlantic and a smaller, calmer one on the Harbor on the other side of the Cape. Also a number of really great little restaurants and little interesting shops.
Go to Lewes and take the Cape May-Lewes Ferry to Cape May, NJ.
http://www.artfuldiner.com/capemay.jpg
http://scienceblogs.com/laelaps/bottlenosemay.jpg
http://www.kevinfleming.com/wp-content/cape-may-lewes-ferry.jpg
(BTW, just past the breakers are bottlenose dolphins along most barrier islands of the east coast. Stormy weather in daytime? They’ll ride the breakers and jump them. A ferry trip yields plenty of dolphins sightings, too)
I haven’t been to the Outer Banks in about 10 years (used to live there, though), but I don’t recall it being anywhere near as crowded as Rehoboth is in August. I have only ever been to Rehoboth in August so maybe the traffic is just something that happens during that month.
Last year it took us about 30 - 45 minutes of driving around town to get an empty meter so we could park on the first day. The day after that we got one of the parking passes and spent some time trying to find an empty parking space for that. We got so desperate that, when we finally found an empty space, my wife sat it in while I went to get the car.
Of course we usually arrive on a Saturday too. On weekdays the traffic is not nearly as bad.
We used to go to Rehoboth when I was a kid - it was always one of my favorite places to visit.
Enjoy your trip!
There is a moderately sized boardwalk at the end of the main drag in Rehoboth. The beach there tends to get a bit congested. Not as bad as Ocean City, but … busy.
For the more relaxed and confortable beach experience I do love Cape Henlopen State Park. Love the dolphins off the coast there, walking through the paths and staking out your own comfy corner of beach.
Much more what it sounds like you are looking for.