Travel Log

Atlantic City

My family has this tradition where we get together in Atlantic City for a pub crawl at a end of the summer. They are a lot of fun and I've been looking forward to it all summer, since after my Disney trip, this summer has been pretty anticlimactic.
Mom and I left Gloucester at 5:15 in the morning to drive to New Jersey, going straight through, only stopping once in New York to go to the bathroom. We arrived at my grandparents house around 10:30-45 and about 11:30, we started off on the roughly hour and a half drive to Atlantic City. By two, we had checked into our hotel room and I was swimming in the pool, chatting with this woman I met named Susan about my dog Tyson and the heart surgeries I've had.
I swam for about an hour until I had to go back to the room to shower and get ready to go out. After I was prettied up, we took a taxi into Atlantic City, down a marsh lined highway dotted with billboards and motels. Our destination was the Resorts Hotel and Casino.

Our first stop is usually the Trump Taj Mahal, but the itinerary was changed this year because there is a strike going on. Crossing a picket lines would be a dangerous and morally dubious thing to do, especially since many of my relatives are union members. Also, I would feel dirty supporting Donald Trump. The word on the street is that the Taj Mahal is going to close down at the end of the summer and will re open with non union labor. "Because this is the 1890s," my dad would later say.

After getting dinner, we met everyone at six o'clock in bar in Resorts confusingly called "It's Five O'clock Somewhere," which made plenty of people on Facebook mixed up about when we were supposed to meet. I was hugged and kissed by distant relatives and posed for selfies and group photos.

At quarter to eight, we moved on to Margaritaville, which happened to be where Mom, Grandma, Pop, and I had dinner. My brother Tom and his girlfriend, Emily had joined us at It's Five O'Clock Somewhere; Tom bought me a drink at Margaritaville. We listened to some great live music and more selfie taking insued.

Almost as soon as we arrived at Margaritaville, we moved on to Landshark, a place across the boardwalk which can be accessed from the beach. I took a picture with my cousin Josette and another one of my cousins at the entrance to Margaritaville in which we look like the Schuyler Sisters.

Around 9:30, we moved on from Landshark to a place simply called The Irish Pub, which is one of our favorite places in Atlantic City and the centerpiece of our pub crawls. Unfortunately, we didn't stay there long because my grandparents wanted to leave around ten. But my mom and my cousin Brian did their traditional car bomb and I was able to order my traditional order of mozzarella  sticks to go.

After posing for a final group picture, Mom and I returned to Resorts, where we met my grandparents, who had stayed there, and got a taxi back to the hotel. For some reason our taxi driver felt the need to tells us how he was shot by muggers, which made my mom and grandparents uncomfortable. Luckily we arrived safely at our hotel.