Lambertville, Stockton, and Frenchtown sit on the New Jersey bank of the Delaware, facing Pennsylvania towns that get more magazine covers. The canal towpath is the spine. Antiques and dinner are the indoor half. You want a car, or at least a ride to one town and a willingness to stay inside it.
This is an independent guide. It is not the official New Jersey tourism office.
Why go
It is the anti-Parkway weekend. Level walking on the Delaware and Raritan Canal towpath, a river you can look at without a boardwalk, and main streets that still sell furniture and books. Autumn is the correct season. July works if you hate sand.
New Hope, Pennsylvania, is across the bridge from Lambertville. It is a fine hour. It is not New Jersey, and it does not need to steal this page.
How to get there
Drive. From Philadelphia the river towns are the right distance for a Friday evening. From New York it is possible, longer, and not a PATH trip. Princeton is the nearest Corridor station; from there you still need a car or a ride. Buses exist in theory. They are not how you should plan Saturday.
Park in one town and walk or bike the towpath to the next if the distance is honest. Lambertville to Frenchtown is a real ride, not a stroll.
Where to stay
A small inn in Lambertville if you want the densest main street and the New Hope bridge. Frenchtown if you want quieter and a little further upriver. Stockton and the countryside inns if the building is the point. Two nights in fall. One night if you are testing the idea.
Do not sleep in a chain on Route 202 and call it a river weekend.
Saturday
Lambertville morning: the streets between the river and the canal, breakfast, one antiques building you actually enter. Then the towpath north. Walk until you are tired or bike if you brought one. The canal is flat. That is why it works with mixed fitness.
Afternoon in Frenchtown or back in Lambertville, depending on how far you went. Dinner in the town you are sleeping in. These kitchens book up on October Saturdays.
Sunday
The other direction on the towpath, or across the bridge to New Hope for an hour if someone in the car needs a second state. Leave before the Sunday drivers discover the same idea.
The towpath
The Delaware and Raritan Canal State Park feeder runs along this bank. Mules used to walk it. You will meet bikes, strollers, and people who think they are the only ones who found it. Surface varies. Check the park alerts after floods. You do not need a reservation. You need decent shoes and water.
Eat
Lambertville has the most tables. Frenchtown has fewer and they matter more. This is not Shore seafood unless the kitchen is trying. It is river-town American with a farm-stand accent. One good dinner beats a crawl.
Without a car
Possible only if you arrive in Lambertville and refuse to leave it. That is a fine 24 hours: canal, bridge, dinner, inn. It is not the three-town version of this page. Princeton-plus-rideshare is a clumsy substitute.