Celebrating Dad's Birthday at the Jersey Shore

We took a very long, multi-leg trip down the shore for the weekend of August 6th. Here is how we traveled:

- from home, we took a T to South Station
- from South Station, we took a commuter rail to Providence, RI
- from Providence, we took a 7:55pm flight to Philly, arriving after 9pm
- from the Philly airport, we took a subway to the Greyhound terminal in Center City
- from the terminal, we took a bus to Atlantic City (and we missed the bus we wanted by just a few minutes, so we had to wait another hour before we could get going...)
- picked up by parents to go to shore house

Even with the horrific shore and just weekend traffic in general, I wonder if we could have just taken a bus to NYC and then to AC in less or about the same amount of time...but needless to say, when we got back to the house, everyone was fast asleep. Brian and I stayed up a little while longer to look at some wedding photos (once we started, we couldn't stop) before retiring to the pull-out couch, near where Sarah and Kevin were sleeping.

The next day, we met up with Cliff down in our familiar haunt of Sea Isle City, where we hit the usual spots, such as the promenade and arcade, and then stopped off at a not-so-usual place, the Pizza Putt with miniature golf on the roof, and had a bite to eat. We picked up some fudge and chocolate covered pretzels as well as some ice cream from Yum Yums, the place that brings back a fond memory of a kid named Zack and his unfortunate incident. We then headed back to the house for some Bocce...




Bravely playing Bocce (that's pronounced"botchy") ball in mosquito AND beehive territory, the teams were like this (we didn't actually have the team names used below):

The A-Team: Ruby, Cliff, and Joe, Sr.
Team B (for Brian, I guess): Brian, Kevin, and Joe, Jr. (replaced later by Mike)

What a surprisingly fun game! It being my first time, I did rather well...at least in the beginning. The A-Team eventually succumbed to a 1-2 defeat, due to a final winning throw/roll by Brian.

We had a wonderful steak dinner with the absolutely most scrumptuous lump crab cakes ever, from Bobby Chez's Margate location. They're bigger than the size of a tennis ball that was slightly flattened, filled only with fresh crab meat, no imitation. Truly fantastic.




I couldn't contain myself every time our card was opened. It was such a ridiculous sound. The imitating parrot was also such a riot that it rarely stayed in one place. After we sang "Happy Birthday," the neighbors next door had guests over and also sang "Happy Birthday." Soon a debate on whether someone should go visit them was necessary ensued. After the dinner and cake, we laughed ourselves to tears, watching Dave Chappelle specials on On Demand. And for the late late show, Sarah and I watch Phone Booth before heading to bed.



When it was FINALLY warm enough to go to the beach (the past few days, even before we got there, had been rather cool /overcast), we could only enjoy just a couple hours of sun since everyone would be heading back to Philly. We had lunch outside at a nearby restaurant, where I ordered yummy linguine with clam sauce, and it seemed that I was another step further away from the healthy food regiment I had just a couple months ago. We drove back to Philly with just a little time to relax before heading off to catch our 8:30pm direct flight back to Boston.