Dover, Philadelphia, Atlantic City

You know how much fun it is running around on Christmas day trying to see everyone that needs to be seen, and make sure you don't leave anyone out, or hurt anyone's feelings?  Yeah, it's a ton of fun.

This year, we decided to skip all that, catch up with family and friends at different times, and headed to Atlantic City for Christmas.  We left Christmas eve, drove to Dover and spent the night there (and gambled a little).  We got up on Christmas day, and geocached our way to AC.  Via Philadelphia.  We decided to grab some virtual caches in Philly, as they are always fun, and full of history.  We found out that this is where Girl Scout Cookies started.  We saw city hall, some other great architecture, and managed to find the Liberty Bell (although the local was none-too-happy about giving directions to out-of-towners).  There were tons of tourist out to see the Liberty Bell on Christmas day, and you could only see it from the outside.  Still not bad, and pretty exciting.  After tooling around there for a bit, we made our way to AC.  

You could see it coming from a bit away, with all of the hotels reaching into the sky.  The rest of the city was pretty unassuming.  The Tropicana hotel was very nice, and had many restaurants, shops, bars, and even an IMAX theater.  Not to mention the casino, and shows too.  

Didn't do horrible gambling.  I got lucky, and within a few minutes of getting settled in to play for a bit, I put $5 into a machine, and hit it for over $200.  That was not the norm, but that did help me play a little longer.  When we would hit pretty good, we'd cashout the ticket, and play on some of our other money for a bit.  Made us feel like we were winning, anyway.  At one point, I took a pic of all the cashout tickets that we had in the room.  (Note:  only the $200 or less was mine.  I'm pretty sure the $0.46 was mine, too.)  I managed to come back home with just about the same amount I took to gamble.  To me, that's coming out ahead.  

The boardwalk was a great old wooden boardwalk, but the beach is VERY small.  And cold on Christmas day.  But still neat.  The only hotel I took a picture of from the boardwalk angle was the Taj Mahal.  But I also got a pic of the closed amusement park.

On the way home, we decided to take the Cape May/Lewes ferry.  Something we both have wanted to do.  It's expensive, and actually may add a little bit of time due to waiting and all, but a fun experience anyway.  Oh yeah, and it was really foggy the day we took it too!

Definitely a fun way to spend a holiday.  Others thought so too, as it was pretty crowded!

AMW