Vive La Atlantic City!

Over the Easter weekend, Sean surprised me with a trip to Atlantic City!! Woohoooo! And what better way to celebrate Easter than by gambling the weekend away, I ask. To semi-quote Tommy Boy, it...was...awesome! And don't worry, we didn't do an ounce of gambling, though get me close to the slots and i start to get dollar signs in my eyes... or smoke and fumes, either one.

To get there, we took a greyhound bus. We were lucky enough to stand in line with Satan herself. I am not kidding. This mom made me cry tears of joy and thankfulness for my own mother. We wrote down a couple of quotes: First, while she was waiting behind us to buy the tickets, she called out to her son (across a crowd of people standing in line at the terminal), "You stand in line behind that Mexican man! Don't let him intimdate you!" She then proceeded to curse vehemently about everything going so slowly and generally going wrong in her life.

Here's another quote, again to her poor son who was about 10. She handed him a cup of soup of some kind. Next thing i know, this takes place:

mom: "Why'd you shake the soup?? Now it spilled!"
son: "I didn't mean to. I didn't even want the soup to begin with..."
mom: "oh, ok... so you shook it on purpose because you didn't want the soup. I see!"
son: "no..."
mom: "you better clean it off you before the bugs eat yo' ass! go get napkins, now!"

...and then sean said she jumped at him to scare him afterwhich he took off. Grrrr. I'd have totally let this lady have it if i wasn't convinced she would breathe fire and club me to a pulp. (eww) Anyway, she was horrific and fortunately we didn't see her for the rest of the trip.

Now for some pictures! First, we stayed in THEE ghetto-est motel. it was so great. So the way to go. Stay in a cheap motel and then play in all the big hotels that are right there nearby. Plus, it was footsteps away from the beach and boardwalk. The room wasn't awful, but there were things about it that were pretty bad. Here's the general look of the room: Oh, i almost forgot. Sean has captions to go with all of these.

Sean says, "Was that REALLY your hotel room? All to yourselves?! Why must you show off like this?"



The maid left us a note on a crusty envelope.
Sean says, "Everybody's got an angle in this town. 'Good luck...'"



This next one has some dialogue to go with it. But first...
Sean says, "Too cheap for words, and yet, not really all that surprising if you saw the outside of this place."





The bathmat, or "placemat" as i more appropriately yet accidentally kept calling it, was made of paper. Paper, friends. Here's what we said:
jen: "what good is that? Do they just want to make us believe it's a bathmat?"
sean: "yeah, it's like an optical illusion. They might as well have just painted it on the floor."

Haha.

So then we went to the boardwalk. It was chilly out, or downright cold, but oh-so pleasant nonetheless. Crowds were minimal and it was just a lot of fun. First, we tried on some hats. Here is me, aka "Carmen Jen Diego."

Sean says, "Never underestimate the ability of a hat to create a complete disguise."




Oh, i forgot. The first thing we did was eat lunch at P.F. Chang's, or as Sean called it, "Good clean Chinese food."



In one of the shops along the boardwalk, there was a tank full of these hermit crabs with their shells all painted. At first i was totally repulsed, as in, how could we do that? But since they're hermit crabs, the shells were most likely pre-painted. And plus, they live in anything. Shoes and tin cans and stuff. So oh well. Still, i don't much like it. Those are ALL live crabs, by the way. You can see a crab with his legs sticking out at the top right hand corner.

Sean says, "I don't know if it's animal abuse or not... at the very least it's animal embarrassment."

(speaking of embarrassment--oy, sean.. these captions... j/k i love you!)




Here's Sean on the beach. As my friend Katie pointed out, it looks like he was photoshopped onto the picture, what with the heavy coat on and all. But, like i said, it was cold... the beach is still cool though.



This is on the boardwalk. I think those buildings were part of some "Wild Wild West" Casino or something.




This store was SO COOL. It was called Magnetism and had wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling magnets. It was a magnet wonderland.




We also visited a candy store called ITSUGAR. Ok, first of all, i really like candy and secondly, one of my 3 wishes would be to get to play in Willy Wonka's main factory room. I mean, remember the giant gummi bears?? ohhh what i wouldn't give! Well, this candy store was pretty much the closest thing to that factory. There was a build-your-own-candybar station, weird candies i've never seen before, an ice cream station, gummies of every kind, sour gummies of every kind, m&m's of every color, Oh, OH!! i was so happy. Here are some pics.

Sean says, "What a fun store! Jen was like a kid in a... wait a minute..."



Speaking of giant gummi bears!! Ok, it wasn't real, (i may or may not have licked it to see) but around it were bins containing the prettiest gummi bears i've ever seen, of all sorts of flavors. Peach, watermelon, apple, grape, etc.

Sean says, "If you look closely you can see the drool dripping down Jen's chin."



Here's a closeup of my bag of gummies. Isn't it gorgeous?
Sean says, "Pretty colors."



Here's a pic of all the different colors of m&m's (in separate containers).
Sean says, "The dark blue ones were mesmerizing."




There was also a runt center. It's funny when you go into a candy store like this and realize it was made for you because you have, at one time or another in your life, have had a deep love for every kind of candy there. like runts. Here's the bin of bananas.

Sean says, "Gorgeous photo, Jen."



I of course was drawn and glued to this next wall for many, many minutes. Look at this picture. Click on it. Candy-flavored lip balm?!?!? aka Jen Heaven!

Sean says, "A whole aisle just for Jen's peculiar obsession."



One of the shopping centers went out over the water's edge and there was a little place where you could go out and be surrounded by water. Here are some pictures.

Sean says, "She's actually treading water in this photo. Go Jen, go!"


And here is Sean watching me struggle. Thanks Sean.



Sean says, "Aww..."


We leaned back over the edge and got this shot. I'm glad we didn't drop the camera, heh.


Here is a view of the boardwalk from that lookout area.

Sean says, This was taken from the catwalk at Caesar's. I wish the southern sunset had come out better, it was really pretty."



We spent some time in buffet restaurants.

Sean says, "And the buffet food wasn't half bad, unless you compared it to any other food anywhere."




Good or bad experience? I'd say, mostly bad. The decent ones were uber expensive and the less decent ones were... well...

Sean says, "This buffet was officially Sean's worst idea of the entire trip. "let's go to the cheapest buffet in town, and then afterward we'll barf, ok?" This butter was 5 gallons of the only recognizable food under the sneezeguard.



This was probably Sean's favorite part of the trip. He loves color, see. Colors next to each other.

Sean says, "This was at Burberry in the mall, and this is how you sell shirts. If only I could have fit all of them into my backpack."


We got some gelato inside the Tropicana hotel. Mmm. Gelato.




Finally, one of the coolest things we did there was see a 3D IMAX movie. I was so stunned at the coolness of this that i am now 3D IMAX-obsessed and have been looking for the nearest locations that show IMAX movies, not just hollywood movies on an IMAX screen. So far, I think the closest is Boston, or Connecticut. lame. But i just may take a trip out there. It...was...awesome! Plus, these 3D glasses rocked.

Sean says, "You may think that just the chance these glasses is enough to make the movie worthwhile, but surprisingly, the 3-D experience was actually even cooler than these required fashion accessories... besides, we didn't get to keep the shades."



Amazingly, we were so mesmerized by the show, we ate this entire barrel of popcorn within the first 3 minutes of the movie. We just kept shoveling it in, incessantly.



UPDATE:
Sorry, i forgot to put this in. Our bus driver on the way home was really friendly and funny. It was nice. He said something as we were pulling away. I hurried and wrote it down. Here's what he said:

"I would like to thank you because without all o'y'all, I wouldn't have a job. Before i was workin' here, I was eating cold pork 'n beans. Now, because of you, I can heat my pork 'n beans up. Now, as we leave, everybody wave to all the people waiting for a bus who didn't make it in time. There should be another bus sometime tomorrow. Next stop: Port Authority, New York."

Ha.

And that's the trip! Now, i had better get at least 25 comments on this post because it took me FOREVER to put all these up. Show a little gratitude, will you.

Hopefully this has been a good experience for you and has shown all of the possibilities that await you at Atlantic City, where all of your dreams come true.