After a couple of hours in Philadelphia, Camden and Trenton, I decided to finish my New Jersey parkbenching tour once and for all.  And I new the tour wouldn't be complete without a trip down to the coast to the sister cities Atlantic City and Ocean City.

Now, these two beach towns might look similar--they've both got beaches and long boardwalks with your typical ice cream, t-shirt and pizza shops--but these sisters have gone two very different ways.  Atlantic City was the "bad" sister that ran off with some guy and got involved in all sorts of vice.  Ocean City was the "good" sister that got married, stayed home and raised the kids...

As I a matter of fact, I didn't even see alcohol being sold anywhere in the entire city--in fact, as I found out later, it's prohibited to sell alcohol in Ocean City!  That's got to be rough on those French tourists I saw!  Imagine a French family having dinner with no wine!

Ocean City, with it's many little amusement parks and miniature golf lots is definitely the place for the kids... in fact, as I walked the boardwalk I started feeling a little guilty that I didn't bring my wife and daughter... but family vacations and parkbenching don't really mix too well...

At eight o clock everything started shutting down and the town started going to sleep...

Let's head up across the bridge to Atlantic City... I'm sure people there don't go to bed at eight o'clock!

The Flanders is a well furnished hotel. The experience it gives is not however very good. My wife and I booked our honeymoon stay at the Flanders last year (at 2007 prices). We booked one of their more expensive "Promenade Suites". Their website claimed that all promenade suites came standard with a whirlpool tub, along with other amenities. When we arrived we discovered that our room did not in fact have a whirlpool tub. We took this issue up with the front desk and were shown a copy in the hotels own paper flier which states that a whirlpool tub or double shower is standard (our room had the shower). We explained that the hotel website says otherwise, and that we were using the information on the website when we booked. The woman at the desk told us she would have the general manager come see us the next morning. The next morning we went down to the front desk again (we were told the GM would come up to our room, but she didn't). The GM was there, and was very apathetic about our situation, saying that the employee that had booked us was fired a while ago, and that they knew that there was inaccurate information on the website. She didn't have an explanation as to why the website had not been updated. When looking over our reservation she made a comment about how there was already a $100+ discount per night on our account. We booked at 2007 rates because we booked in 2007. This is not a discount, it was early booking. I pointed this out to her. The best she could do to correct our problem was offer us a free breakfast at the in-house restaurant. We booked a room, with specific amenities, and we were given a room that did not match what we booked. If it had not been for the tub, we would not have booked at the Flanders. Apparently the hotel management has no problem with generating bookings through false advertising on their website. I should also mention that our room was supposed to have an ocean view. Well, it did face the ocean, but instead of a view of the ocean, we had a view of the small amusement park behind the hotel, and could hear clearly the noise of the rides and screaming children until late at night. Another issue we had during our stay was the inability to get on the hotel's wireless network. The rooms do not offer wired connectivity. The only Internet access is wireless. I could connect to the network, but was unable to maintain a working Internet connection. When I did get a working Internet connection, it would drop out after 30 seconds to 2 minutes. My wife happened to spot the wireless router out in the hallway, and being a network engineering major, I looked at it. The hotel uses a residential grade Linksys router to offer internet access. My guess is that they went cheap and the equipment they are using is unable to handle the capacity needed for a busy hotel. On our last day, I guess as the cherry on top of this whole ordeal, we discovered ants in our room. I would not stay at this hotel again.

07-07-07 proved to be a lucky day for me. To make up for the 2 and a half days of being sick and the Cape May fireworks being cancelled...I was given the opportunity to have the best seat in the house for the Ocean City fireworks.

Saturday evening around 5:00 my cousin and his friend hopped into my Uncle's truck, stopped at Wawa for some hoagies and made our way to Avalon. At the marina we got into a 'rubber duckie' (i'm using the terms my Uncle used last night) that took us to meet a tug boat that was carrying a huge barge with fireworks. It was a 3 hour hour boat ride to Ocean City - but it was a gorgeous evening and I had my cousin to entertain me along with the captain of the boat and his mate.

Once we arrived off the coast of Ocean City the men told us "5 minutes." I climbed the ladder to the roof of the captain's control room and layed down amongst the attenas and radar. The barge with the fireworks was no more than a half dozen feet away. Then we heard "50 seconds."

As I was laying there I could see Wildwood to the south and Atlantic city to the north. It was pretty incredible to see a prominent portion of the Jersey shoreline all in one sweeping glance.

50 seconds later...I heard nothing but a "BOOM" after another "BOOM!" The sounds surrounded me and it looked like it was raining fireworks. They were right above my head with their tails coming down towards me. The sight and the sounds combined with the cool atlantic ocean air created a 20-minute indescribable moment.

I saw fireworks from the tug boat that tugged the barge with the fireworks!!! I made my dad (who used to work boats on the Boston harbor with his grandfather) VERY jealous. And I had a great time....even on the 3 hour boat ride back. Because of course, I was outside looking at the stars.