Thursday, March 19, 2009

Atlantic City Day 1

Last weekend I headed to Atlantic City for a printwear show to follow up on some research and see some colleagues. I'd also wanted to see A.C. properly as it was known as the mini Vegas of the east coast. Someone I know kindly offered to share their suite as rooms are expensive in A.C. so I was lucky enough to be able to stay in the Trump Taj Mahal. Friday evening, I headed out onto the 'strip' armed with my camera and tripod to see the sights.

This is the front entrance of the Taj Mahal and before I had walked to Caesars which was about half a mile down the road, I had been chatted to by two homeless guys, seen an arrest outside a check cashing place and witnessed a marital breakup where the wife stormed off hauling a child and suitcases to another hotel. This was a dodgy city, but quite interesting.


Undaunted, I continued inside Caesars and walked around the main lobby area. All the hotels are themed like their Vegas peers and not to any lesser scale. The Caesars in Vegas is about three times the size of this hotel, but no grander.

All of the hotels have grand entrances brightly lit by thousands of bright bulbs and neon strips with luxury cars and limos parked everywhere.


Ballys was my favorite hotel with a Wild West theme and I spent a lot of time here. Both of the nights that I explored, I met some really friendly people here to have drinks with, and was shown how to play a slot machine. I have absolutely no interest in gambling and on both nights managed to only part with $10, $5 each night. The second night, I was actually pushing the buttons while yawning and staring off into the distance wishing I picked a quicker way to lose than a 1 cent machine. It wasn't until someone caught my eye and smiled that I realized how odd I must have looked, playing a machine with no interest whatsoever!

This was inside the Resorts hotel which had an art deco theme that wasn't particularly captivating but this mirrored ceiling was fun to watch for a while.

I didn't explore much of the boardwalk on Friday, knowing I would have more time on Saturday, but I kept seeing these odd little carriages all over the place. Can you believe that people actually pay for someone else to push them the mile or so up and down the boardwalk in one of these?

This is the back entrance to the hotel and our suite looked out from the right of the tower 24 floors up.

1 comment:

Nicole said...

Its a shame you missed Showboat in its heyday. All the amazing Mardi Gras stuff was just fun.

Now its been renovated and its not nearly as fun as it once was.