IT'S NOT THE BEACH… IT'S THE SHORE!

It's the Shoe!

The closest RV Park to Atlantic City is the Carefree Shady Acres Resort.  It’s located in a nice neighborhood of Absecon where everything is very green.  Good WIFI, clean laundry room and decent spaces make this a great place to call home while we visit the Jersey Shore.  As we finish setting up, we meet a couple from the area.  They give us the 411 on the best local pizza and market for Italian sausage. 

Now we have pizza on the brain… so we promptly head over to Calabria Pizza and

Autunno… YUM!

Italian Grill. There are only a few patrons here when we arrive and we get a nice quiet table in the back room. We ask about some wine with dinner, but our hostess/waitress, who is also the wife of the owner, informs us that they do not sell any alcohol, but you can BYOB and there is a liquor store just down the street.  Well, we’re hungry and can pass on an adult beverage.  We order a garden salad to share and two individual pizzas. The salad is generous and their homemade creamy Dijon dressing is well balanced and zesty.  We choose the Meat Lover’s Pizza with bacon, pepperoni, sausage and meatballs and a vegetarian white pie - The Autunno, with eggplant, spinach, roasted peppers, Romano cheese, garlic and olive oil.  All of the toppings are fresh and full of flavor, but for us, the sign of a great pizza is the crust, thin and tender, not tough or doughy and Calabria knocks it out of the park.  Big plus – they deliver.  A few days later we call and order the Veal Parmigianino, (tender lightly breaded veal with a wonderful tomato sauce and lots of melted mozzarella, and a side of Penne pasta with meat sauce yum!) Our second dish is the Gnocchi with vodka sauce.  We pair this with a bottle of Terra De Oro Zinfandel, from Amador County that we picked up last week in York PA.  For desert we have a cannoli how perfect is this?

You can’t go to Atlantic City and not drop a few coins into the one-armed bandits.  It’s common knowledge that the slots in A.C. are some of the tightest in the nation.  This may be true, but the casino gods smile on us and we leave the Borgata with a few more dollars in our pockets.

Ocean City Stroll

Warm weather and sunny skies have us going to the shore.  We drive the coastal route heading south Ocean City, we stroll along the boardwalk. To access the beach one needs a beach tag that costs $5 per person and there is no alcohol available anywhere within the city limits.  This has been a dry town since the 1800s… no wonder it’s quiet here.

Pink Lady with a
Pink Bicycle

Further down the coast picturesque Cape May holds the distinction of being the oldest seashore resort in the United States and one of the most unique. The streets are lined with painted lady gingerbread Victorians.  It is also world famous for the observation of migrating birds in the fall and the top bird watching area of the Northeastern United States.  We arrive at the Cape May lighthouse at closing time so we cannot climb to the top, but we are able to check out the bird observatory and watch osprey, swans, egrets and other water loving fowl.

Atlantic City boasts a four mile of boardwalk, (the longest in the world.) An interesting Sunday afternoon observation: Caesars Casino has The Pier; four stories of luxury shops over the water.  Down the boardwalk is the Trump Taj Mahal Casino with the adjacent Steel Pier Amusement Park with some unique rides and lots of carnival games.  Both of these ventures must be expensive to maintain but there is a distinct lack of customers here.  Between these two icons is Bally’s Bikini Beach Bar; a simple structure on the beach with a big sound system and bikini clad servers… IT'S PACKED!

Steel Pier Whack a Mole

Bikini Beach Bar
The Pier in the Background

And then there’s sausage.  We drive out to Hammonton to Bagliani’s and pick up some of

Sausage with Fennel

their award winning sausage. The market is small but they have an amazing variety of artisanal cheeses, beautiful produce, imported pastas and a great butcher shop. So many choices… We end up with Sweet and Hot sausage, Provolone, Pecorino, and wine soaked asiago cheeses, some pasta and fresh produce.  For dinner: grilled sweet sausage with roasted peppers and Pecorino cheese on toasted rolls and fresh corn on the cob… Italian Sausage will never be the same.  Fortunately we have a few pounds in the freezer and when that runs out we can call and have some shipped anywhere in the U.S.

This part of Jersey lives up to its “Garden State” name.  Everything is green, the people are friendly, the toll roads smooth, not too expensive and diesel is the cheapest we have found in all of our travels… 

Well that’s about it for now in the Mid-Atlantic states, next up… New England…

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