Atlantic City

For those who haven't heard of it, Atlantic City is like the Las Vegas of the East coast. Except nicer.

I arrived by train and walked straight down to the boardwalk and along the beach. The boardwalk is lined with casinos, touristy shops, restaurants and bars. Much like the Strip in Las Vegas but with a nice beach on one side and much cleaner. Atlantic City has a more family atmosphere, with plenty of people out with their families on a long weekend. It was a coincidence, but I got here on the Friday afternoon just in time for the Memorial Day long weekend, so it was a busy time for Atlantic City, a city that would but for the tourism be a very small place.

During this trip I had adopted an “anti hotel policy.” I find hotels pretty boring, and prefer to stay at hostels and similar accommodation where I can meet plenty of people. But Atlantic City is a place for local tourism, and there aren't any hostels. But I did manage to find some interesting accommodation. Google told me about an Irish pub with cheap upstairs rooms, and cheap food and drink at the bar. The internet reviews said the bar was a great friendly place, but the hotel wasn't much.

So when I arrived, I was expecting a dump, but was pleasantly surprised. It was an old quaint hotel, full of antiques and Irish themed pictures on the wall. I was impressed with my single room. Not having a TV, air conditioning or an ensuite is no big deal after living in dorm rooms for almost 2 months. The beauty of it was that it was as cheap as a hostel too.

I hung out a bit in the bar, and met a variety of tourists and locals. The locals all told me that this was the best place in all of Atlantic City. $1.75 draft beers and $5 meals (served 24 hours a day) kept me coming back to the pub a number of time through the long weekend.

I played some poker tournaments at the Hilton Casino and checked out various other casino bars, getting drinks for free along the way. As in Vegas, they comp you free drinks, from coffee to cocktails, as long as you are sitting at a poker table or even playing a slot machine. Some locals put me onto a particular bar called Dizzy Dolphin, at which they have video poker machines built into the bar, and as long as you have some credits in the machine while you sit at the bar, you get comped drinks. I stumbled in there at 2am on one night, and after 3 long island iced teas and meeting one of the actors from the Sopranos, somehow managed to get home to the other end of the boardwalk... (mainly thanks to an all night bus service called the Jitney)

But Atlantic City wasn't all drinking and gambling. The shopping was really good too. One of the piers has a massive shopping centre on it, at which I went on a bit of a shopping spree in the Quicksilver shop. In America, you only pay about $20 for a brand name T-shirt, and this shop had half of its stuff discounted 50% off, and New Jersey doesn't charge tax for clothes. I followed that up by shopping at the outlets. Now I fear I'm going to have to buy an extra bag to fit everything in.

The weather was mainly nice ans sunny for the long weekend, so I even spent some time hanging out at the beach. But there was a breeze, and supposedly the water was really cold, so I didn't hang there long. There were crowds on the beach, but for me the beach wasn't as big a deal. As nice as it was, it was still nowhere near as nice as the beaches we get in Melbourne, let alone the rest of Australia. Though it was good to be out in the sun on the sand, before heading to the Big Apple.