Become Bewitched in Witch City! Which City? Witch City! Which City? Salem!

Next summer, The Wizarding World of Harry Potter will open in Orlando, and throngs of Harry Potter fans will flock to Florida to see larger-than-life editions of their favorite fantastical locales. I hope to be among them. This year, I got a dose of witches of a different kind when I joined my friends Erica and Art in Salem, Massachusetts, most famous for being the site of the Salem Witch Trials that were the subject of Arthur Miller's The Crucible. It's ironic that the hysteria to stamp out supposed witches resulted in the town being forever associated with them, to the point that it's nicknamed "Witch City." You can count on seeing plenty of store fronts and artwork alluding to witches. Shops boast names like The Broom Closet and Hex Old World Witchery, and if you go later in the day, you're likely to see several tour guides in costume, though pirates seem to be just as prevalent as witches. We were leaving just as these folks were coming out of the woodwork; I get the sense that Salem is at its busiest at night.

My friends live only a short drive from Salem, and on my first day in town, we headed there for dinner after a day of perusing Boston. Salem Beer Works is where I got my official Boston clam chowder, as well as an enormous basket of sweet potato fries. The food and service were excellent, and I loved the decor, especially the line of chalk drawings near the ceiling depicting various menu items. The peach cobbler looked especially enticing, but by the time dessert rolled around, I was too stuffed to take that notion too seriously, especially when I still had half a basket of fries, which the waiter helpfully offered to pack up for me. Our meals cost about twenty dollars each there, including drinks and, for Erica and Art, dessert.

Though we didn't do any more Salem meandering that day, we returned to the same starting point two days later. The parking garage across the street was quite reasonable, especially in comparison to Boston, where it was three times as expensive. Parking during dinner was only three dollars and came with the bonus of a jolly ticket-taker who looked like Santa Claus and cracked corny jokes. The day rate was twelve dollars, and the location was prime: not only right across the street from Salem Beer Works, but in the immediate vicinity of several major Salem attractions, including the old Burial Ground and the Pirate Museum. After a stop at a gift shop featuring a souvenir penny machine and racks full of 20-cent postcards, it was to the cemetery that we headed first. Upon our entry, we were greeted with the incongruous sight of a guy in a giant slushee costume wandering amongst the gravestones. Once Ice Guy went on his merry way, we checked out the courtyard memorializing those who died in 1692 after being accused of witchcraft. The most famous of these include Rebecca Nurse, John Proctor and Martha Corey, all of whom were hanged, and Giles Corey, who was pressed to death. Running along the sidewalk are bits of Proctor's defiant speech, in which he declares himself not guilty though he knows it will cost him his life.

From that point, our wandering took a more cheerful turn as we investigated several eccentric shops and kept our eyes peeled for photo opportunities. Probably my favorite of these was the statue of Samantha Stephens of Bewitched; I'd seen it from the car on our way in, but I didn't realize until we approached it on foot that this wasn't just any witch. She was the only famous fictional witch we found getting this kind of treatment, though I suppose Sabrina or Hermione might have been lurking in a hidden corner of town somewhere. There was a stained glass window near the cemetery depicting a crone who strongly resembled the apple-distributing version of the wicked queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and several shops sold Harry Potter-related items. All the while, the dulcet tones of a lone guitar player reached out ears. The town felt much quieter than Boston, and crossing streets was not nearly as harrowing.

Speaking of harrowing, one of our favorite finds was a shop called Derby Square Book Store. All of the books were half-price despite being new, and there were some pretty unusual selections; I walked away with Our Peaceable Kingdom, a book of black-and-white photographs by one John Drysdale depicting striking instances of interspecies harmony. What made this shop so memorable, however, was the shelving system. Books were piled in precarious stacks up to the ceiling; even after procuring a stepstool, Erica had trouble reaching the ones she was after. While the books were grouped into sections that were supposedly arranged alphabetically by author, I think rampant browsing laid waste to most attempts at organization. It felt almost as random as the yearly book sale sponsored by my hometown library and twice as perilous, since the narrow aisles and the tall stacks added up to a jumbo-sized game of Jenga whenever you wanted to remove a volume. One of my favorite photos from the trip is of Erica flipping through a book while hundreds of others tower around her. If you stop in Salem, put this one on your itinerary; it's the kind of place you have to experience for yourself.

My other favorite shop was a comic book store called Harrison's. As Erica, Art and I are all pretty fond of the Beatles, I got a kick out of the name, though I didn't notice it until we were leaving. By that point, we'd spent a good half hour or so investigating the contents of this geek's paradise. Star Wars, Star Trek and Lord of the Rings were all heavily represented. I was tempted by a plush R2-D2, a two-foot-tall Gandalf and a Death of Spock action figure set, though I reined in my impulses and walked away with just one figure: Mt. Doom Sam, who is fully poseable and bellows, "I can't carry it for you, but I can carry you!" I also recommend a tiny antique shop called Tobie's Jewelers, where I discovered a collection of trolls, including several large Norfins, which I remember admiring at an expansive gift shop near Chautauqua, NY, the only place I'd ever seen them. As I debated between the policeman and a fireman (eventually settling on the former in hopes of recreating the Make Way for Ducklings scene in my backyard), the gregarious women running the shop kept us engaged in pleasant conversation.

Museums abound in Salem, whether you're into witches, pirates or Lizzie Borden, but while we perused the gift shops of several of these establishments, we stuck to the free territory, which was quite entertaining enough on its own. The Salem Wax Museum of Witches and Seafarers is one place with several photo ops right in the gift shop. A number of shops have interesting statues out front; I found two at Maria's Sweet Somethings: Wicked Good Confections. There's the Revolutionary-era fellow austerely holding out a blackboard on which are written messages for the day, and there's also an enormous, delicious-looking ice cream cone. My vote for the funniest store front in Salem goes to The Lobster Shanty, which promises "Warm Beer," "Lousy Food," "Surly Waitresses," "Rude Bartenders" and "Cranky Cooks." And no trip to Salem would be complete without a stop at the Salem Witch Museum, which offers a vast array of witch-related items. Though this was one of our last stops, I still purchased a Merlin hat, primarily for the purpose of having a few photos of me in Salem with a wizard hat on my head.

There are dozens of eateries to choose from in Salem. Having already eaten at Salem Beer Works the other day, we opted for the Irish pub O'Neill's for lunch. There, I had the tastiest calamari I've ever eaten, while Art and Erica enjoyed some traditional fish and chips. Lunch was somewhere in the area of ten to fifteen dollars, including drinks, excluding dessert, as we had our eye on ice cream cones at Maria's, though we eventually abandoned that idea because so many others had the same notion and we didn't feel like contending with the crowd. We capped our day off with a trip to the House of the Seven Gables, though we had to content ourselves with the exterior view, since tours were closed because of a wedding. Erica, having taken the tour before, gave me the abbreviated version, and we snapped a few quick pictures and spent a moment at a nearby overlook gazing out at the ocean, where dozens of boats were on the move.

As with Boston, it's pretty much up to you how much money you spend in Salem. There's no reason you have to break the bank to have a good time. Though I'm sure the tours and museums are interesting, I didn't feel as though I missed out on anything by skipping out on those. Just bring a camera, a sense of humor and a spirit of exploration, and I'm sure you'll find Salem every bit as satisfying as I did.