Off we go to Bruce Springsteen's home state of New Jersey; "I'll meet you tonight in Atlantic City".
Well, today we went to Atlantic City and we looked around for Bruce during the night, but he was nowhere to be seen.
We have our breakfast, pack up and check out from Ronks and Amish country and drive east to a very different environment.
On the way, we pass the outskirts of Philadelphia and cross a couple of its bridges in the process. Downtown Philadelphia can be seen faintly to the left in the photo below.
Our check in time at the Showboat Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City is 4pm, but we arrive there just before noon. Hans does a quick park outside the hotel and hangs around the car while Di goes inside to see whether we can check in early. We can check in from 12pm, but it will cost us $11. Done deal. We are on our way.
So, we check in, park our car in Showboat's enormous general public parking garage, find our room and immediately wander out again and onto the famous Atlantic City boardwalk on the other and front side of the Showboat building.
A few pics up and down the boardwalk on an April Sunday afternoon.
We liked the Atlantic City Beach Patrol building behind Hans here, built and painted to look like a boat.
Of course, the TV series Boardwalk Empire is set in Atlantic City and we passed a studio set of sorts on the boardwalk. Plenty of photos would have been taken here.
Atlantic City boardwalk is not really that glam. We were sure that it again tries to be, but between the big casinos and hotels, there were plenty of cheap eats, t-shirt shops and astrologers / mystics / massage parlours etc. The place felt a bit like Venice Beach in California.
These guys were really impressive outside Atlantic City's Conference Centre. According to the spiel in front of them, they were National Champions 2012 in Intermediate Percussion division. We believe it. They were very tight.
It is good to see that the Atlantic City boardwalk actually is a boardwalk and not like Virginia Beach's "boardwalk" which is made of concrete. Of course, with all that timber and lots of people around, board maintenance must be constant.
They were running helicopter joy flights from one of the piers. A 5 minutes tour up and down Atlantic Beach cost $49 per head. Up to 3 punters each time.
Nah, we wait until we get to New York City and do a flight there instead.
A self portrait from the pier, which is a "fun pier" with plenty of attractions for the young and young at heart.
We had to go down to the water to see whether the Atlantic Ocean is any warmer since last time we checked it out in Virginia Beach some weeks ago.
A fraction warmer perhaps, but not swim friendly yet is our verdict. Although a few more people here sunbaking and enjoying the sunny weather. We liked the guy asleep in his shaded chair to the far right of this photo.
There were a fair bit of sand dune stabilization going on along the beach.
One of the piers forms part of Caesar's Palace and is filled with shops. The pier building looked unbelievably bad from the outside, with large billboards with advertising, but inside was quite interesting.
They had these small rest areas where you sit in chairs and benches in sand and looking out over the beach behind glass. We were sure that these alcoves were very popular in winter when the Atlantic wind would be pounding the beach, but even today there were quite a few people there.
Yes, we got ourselves a cuppa and sat there for a while like the other punters. This is the view from our bench.
And this is at the end of the Caesar's Palace pier. One way, looking south...
And the other, north.
We then decided to wander inland one or two blocks to see what was there. We passed this unbelievably boring very new park. Note that there is not a single tree there and apart from us, not a single soul either. The place seemed rather pointless to us.
One block in from the Atlantic City boardwalk is a different world. The division between the have and the have not's was very obvious. Mostly black people on the street here. People rummaging through waste bins. Hotels and motels looked mostly run down. Pawn shops and small grocery stores. A few churches.
We found it interesting.
Pawn shop at the end of a motel... First time we have ever seen that. We wouldn't leave too many valuables in our motel room if we stayed here and went out.
Suddenly, we walked into the entrance at the back to Taj Mahal Casino owned by Trump. Yep, it has an enomous footprint alright.
However, what you can't see here though is that just behind from where Hans is taking the photo, across the street, are not one but two pawn shops. It is all divided by a street.
We wander back to our Showboat hotel room for a break and then around 6pm we wander out to find somewhere for dinner. We checked out the various nicer eateries within the Showboat complex, but nothing seemed to be worth the prices they were asking. Well, there is also a Johnny Rocket's hamburger joint there, which was popular perhaps due to being more reasonably priced, so burger and beer it was for us.
We decided to sit in the bar to eat which gave us opportunity to check out what was going on in the kitchen. It was mayhem in there. These guys were busy.
The burgers arrived together with our Coronas. Not bad, although at $6 + tax for a Corona with no lime is a bit steep. Well, it filled us up well.
Back into the casino after dinner to test our luck...
This time on pokie. Well, our $5 outlay eventually transformed itself into $30 so that paid for dinner if not the beer. All good.
We wander out in the dusk along the Atlantic City boardwalk to check out the lights and take a few photos. Quite empty now and much colder this Sunday evening. We shoot off a few pics.
This was somewhat symbolic for the area. Everything seemed to be just a little bit out of action or broken and the working vs the non working neon letters on top of Taj Mahal seemed to encapsulate it all. We wondered what Donald Trump thought about it.
These vehicles are Atlantic City boardwalk's version of tuk tuk or taxi, but seemed more like a giant shopping trolley they way they were pushed around. Plenty of them there.
You can always tell that you are in a touristy area when there is a "Ripley's believe it or not". However, the building looked quite dramatic at night.
We have seen Margaritaville before in Nashville, and they are setting up a new outlet as part of the Resorts complex which was undergoing major renovations. Margaritaville was not yet finished and open, but the sign worked fine.
Back to our room around 9pm after Di decided that she wanted a Baileys as a nightcap. Good night.
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