A while back I signed up for a promotion that gave me free Hertz Gold status and 500 Hertz points, enough for a free weekend rental. I looked for all the cool places I could go within driving distance of DC. At first, I was going to go to Falling Water, the Frank Lloyd Wright house, but found out that tours of the house aren't offered in January and February. From there, I pulled up a map and saw that Atlantic City was only 3.5 hour drive. So, Atlantic City it was.
We headed to the airport at around 9:30 am to pick up our rental car from Hertz. We had ordered a Buick Lacrosse, but they said they didn't have any available so we got a Nissan Altima instead
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| Nissan Altima |
The drive was actually really nice. We went through a bunch of little towns and got to see all the wonders of Wilmington, Delaware!
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| Chesapeake Bay Bridge |
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| Some Other Bridge |
Along the way, we stopped at an outlet mall and stumbled across a Pepperidge Farm store, which I found very strange and awesome.
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| Pepperidge Farm Store |
After about four long hours of driving, we arrived in Atlantic City. We started off by wandering around and looking at some of the hotels.
After losing $1 on the slot machines, we decided to head over to the Borgata Hotel, which was supposed to have the best buffet in Atlantic City. The Borgata is a lot nicer than the most of the other hotels in Atlantic City. It's much newer, compared with the rest of the outdated hotels like Trump. The buffet, at $31/person, was expensive, but well worth it for the opportunity to shove vast quantities of food into my face at high velocities. The quality of the food was pretty good, and they had a wide array of options from sushi to fried chicken to gelato.
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| Iced Tea |
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| Dessert |
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| Seating Area |
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| Gelato |
By the end, I was extremely stuffed to the point of needing to be wheeled out in a wheelchair. That's the problem with buffets. You always go in with high hopes, but just leave feeling sick.
We had to return the car back to the Hertz in DC by 2 am since we only had it for one day. After the buffet, we had a few more hours to kill so we looked around the hotel some more.
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| Lobby |
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| Lobby |
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| Lemmings Gambling their Life Savings Away |
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| Horse Racing |
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| Lobby |
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| View from the Hotel |
Before leaving, I decided to give gambling one last try. I put $5 into the machine and instantly won $2. I decided to call it quits while I was ahead and cashed out.
So in the end, I left Atlantic City with a profit of $1. The drive back home went by fairly fast. I doubt I'll visit Atlantic City again any time soon, but if I do, I'll be sure to bring some tupperware to take home some of the buffet with me (yes, I'm a fat ass). Overall though, it was an interesting day trip, and I hope to maybe stay overnight next time.
