Different for Girls: Top 5 Lesbian Meccas

5. Asheville, N.C.

Fall colors are at their finest in Asheville, a remarkable artsy Appalachian town of 70,000 where women walk hand-in-hand and art deco, beaux-arts, and neoclassical architecture create an elegant backdrop. The best places to leaf peep in and around "Sheville" are along 469-mile Blue Ridge Parkway between Shenandoah National Park and the Great Smoky Mountains or in downtown's Asheville Botanical Gardens.

Best spot to meet the girls

Lively Malaprops (55 Haywood St; 828-254-6734; Malaprops.com ), a friendly, lesbian-owned bookstore and hub of the women's community, has a sidewalk café. It's the perfect perch to browse local ladies. Once it's too dark to admire foliage, a packed evening events schedule is stacked with bookings from Women on Words Poetry Circle to Bridging Difference book club nights -- where locals and visitors discuss works such as lesbian writer Audre Lorde's Sister Outsider .