Thursday 19th July 2014
13.55
Due to my ham-fistedness with using phone apps, unfortunately I’m going to have to post the photos separately…
On the road to Atlantic City, in full Road Trip mode: radio, Dunkin’ Donuts, using all our loose change up for road tolls.
We (myself, ShortButSweet and her friend LittleBitFierce, who is all-American and super nice) are already in New Jersey, so should arrive before too long. All my expectations of what AC is going to be like come from Boardwalk Empire, which at least puts me further ahead than last weekend travelling to Yo-hio.
I watch Boardwalk Empire with my friend SteamBoat at home, as a bridge between Game of Thrones. I suck a bit at watching it though and am always asking him what’s supposed to be happening: I’m far too caught up in the 20s set-up and fail to see the conflicts the gangsters all seem to be in because Prohibition seemed not to bother anybody. But the exciting thing is that according to the sign in the lobby, Nucky Thompson did actually stay here.
Friday 20th June 2014
14.45
On the beach with ShortButSweet and LittleBitFierce. It’s braw. Flirting with 30 degrees and no humidity. Have random pieces of sunburn but nothing terrible. ShortButSweet is finding out from Handsome Sven that he is currently deep in a forest in Sweden with his friends drinking and singing songs to celebrate Midsummer or something like that, conforming to just about every glorious Scandinavian stereotype ever.
We arrived in Atlantic City yesterday afternoon. Driving in, you’re met with a huge wedge of skyscraper hotels and billboards and big wide American roads. Atlantic City looks like it has been frozen in time – or maybe a selection of different times – with massive concrete hotels and casinos straight from the 70s, and the rickety boardwalk creaking back to the 20s but chocked with food stands and souvenir shops and bars and seagulls. Everything looks like it should either be magicked back or forward in time to revive it. It was Twenties without the Roar.
So our hotel was much better than we expected. It has a big lobby and a ton of floors, and our room is fine (and clean, which is always a plus). The place has a definite Grand Budapest Hotel feel – you could tell it used to be the swankiest hotel in town and now it’s very self-consciously faded but keeps a bit of old-school charm. And we managed to scam free parking too. We dumped our bags and set off exploring down the boardwalk and the beach. It was a little overcast bit still warm. Like I said, it’s a bizarre place here. I can’t really get my head around the ‘wholesome, tacky, All-American seaside family fun’ thing mixed with the ‘oh by the way, don’t forget that you’re all here to drink and gamble’ bit.
But, lest I forget, we did of course head to the World Cup in Sand Sculpting, hosted in Atlantic City for the second year in a row! We checked that out, which was just strange. Everyone was maybe a couple of hours into it and so it was all spooky walking around in this overcast cloudy scene with all these dudes sweeping and stamping massive mounds of sand. Afterwards we went to a bar to grab some appetisers and our first cocktail of the vacay.
We decided that we’d go to the hotel bar for a few drinks as we’d been given coupons, and then head out.
As I was saying, the hotel exceeded our (low) expectations – but when we were trying to find the bar we were wandering around all these floors with nobody there and things half-way refurbished and sometimes distant music, and it started to get a lot less Grand Budapest and a lot more The Shining. It was hilariously deserted and unclear where you were meant to go.
Eventually we got to the bar – a room with a ‘band’ at the front who were performing in front of this big sparkly drape, and like four people watching them. It was so strange. We sat down at the bar and, essentially, got glamorously trashed. It was a definite tick in the box of a girls weekend away. Our coupons were 2-for-1 but the cocktails were mahoosively alcoholic and my wine was at least two large glasses in one. Our bartender was fed up at work and so didn’t give a care about measurements and such. We had great chat over the evening and a really fun time, even though the whole set-up was so unglamorous. After a few hours we still had a tiny bar tab yet our plans to go out into the nightlife were curtailed by not really being able to walk too well, so we were in bed by 11pm.
And now at the beach we’re relaxing off any general malaise. And our attempt at going out tonight will hopefully be more successful.
19.00
Forget what I said about not being sunburned… Whaaaa…
12 Weeks a Maeve 