Cape May/Atlantic City

Normally, I would say “Thursday! So close to the weekend!”, but I’m on spring break so it’s more like “Thursday?! Can it be Tuesday again?” If you follow me on Instagram you may have seen my posts about my little mini trip. I call it a mini trip because I was just gone for the day/overnight. I had some bigger tentative spring break plans but they didn’t pan out, which is okay because I seriously needed the chance to just relax and as relaxing as a proper vacation would’ve been traveling can take a lot out of you. How many of you feel like you need a vacation after a vacation? So my friend/coworker and I decided to do a little trip down to Cape May and Atlantic City. A sort of staycation since we stayed in state.

Cape May is the southernmost point in New Jersey and I haven’t been there since I was a kid. Not a lot was going on there since it’s off-season right now. In fact, since we went off season we didn’t even have to pay for parking! We drove down Monday morning despite the rain and luckily by the time we arrived the rain had completely stopped! It was cloudy at first but by lunchtime the clouds were gone and the sun was shining!

Our first stop was supposed to be the Cape May Lighthouse, but we missed the turn and saw that the road was going to end just a little further up the road. We decided to keep going instead of taking a u-turn to see what was up there. We assumed it would be a nice view. So glad we ended up going to the end of the road because we came to a large stretch of beach with no buildings in sight! It’s not common to see a large stretch of beach here with no hotels, boardwalk, or beach houses.

Can you believe this ship has been stuck here since 1926? When we first got out of the car, the sign explaining the S.S. Atlantus was far away (not to mention the sign is not very big) and I immediately asked my friend what that thing sticking out of the water was! It was really cool to see and the coastline was beautiful. It really stretched so far on either side of the S.S. Atlantus with nothing in sight. So happy we took this little detour!

Next up, the lighthouse. I think I went to this lighthouse when I was a little kid, but I don’t remember if I went up it. This lighthouse was constructed in 1859. Climbing up all the steps was tiring and I won’t lie, I was starting to get out of breath while climbing up! As I type this up, it’s been 2 days since I ventured up the lighthouse and my calfs (calves?) are still killing me! It costs $8/adult to go up the lighthouse, which goes to maintaining the building.

It was still really cloudy when we went up the lighthouse, but it made for a cool effect in pictures since the clouds hung so low. The blue sky in the distance was so far away that it takes up such a small amount of space between the clouds and the ocean!

After miraculously not falling down the spiraling staircase on my way back down, we headed into town to walk around a bit and grab some lunch. We went to Washington Street Mall, a little area of shops and restaurants. It was so cute and I loved the tulips. The trees had twinkle lights so I’m sure this looks really pretty at night.

We then left Cape May and headed back north just a bit to Atlantic City. Atlantic City, unlike Cape May, is a place I have gone to countless times but I actually haven’t been in about 2 years so it was nice to be back. We did a little shopping and walking around the beach and Boardwalk before heading out for the night.

The next day before heading home we went to The Pool at Harrah’s Resort, which is a really cool domed pool area. It’s temperature controlled so even in the dead of winter you can feel like you’re vacationing somewhere tropical. The dome has a pool (of course), cabanas, and bar. At night, the pool turns into a night club which is always a good time. We sat at the bar at The Pool for lunch, which was the perfect way to end our mini-trip!

The pictures that I didn’t share in this post will be made into separate posts coming up this week such as a restaurant review of the place we ate dinner at, my spa experience, a fashion post consisting of what I wore out that night, and I’m also working on putting a video together but who knows how well that’ll turn out so I don’t want to make any promises on that one just yet!

All in all, it was a great mini-trip and it’s always nice to visit/re-visit places that are more local to you when you’re not going somewhere far off. By the way, I did gamble but only for about 20 minutes and I won $14 on the penny slots!