Fun at the (Cold) Beach TR
Trip Report
Destination: Reston, VA and Ocean City, MD / Rehoboth Beach, DE (With a detour to Assateague Island)
Dates: November 8-16, 2013
So sorry to delay this TR, but you’ll understand I think because a) I wanted to make sure all the photos were together (and I had to fight with the new Photobucket to get that done), b) I wanted to make sure any details I missed were filled in, and c) I wanted to make sure it was ready to go in basically one full day.
So, hi everyone! I’m BJ, and I am so excited to bring you my report from Ocean City, Maryland and Rehoboth Beach, DE! Also, while I titled this TR Fun at the (Cold) Beach, actually the weather was surprisingly warm for this time of year, and there was maybe 1 or 2 days that was typically cold for this time of year, but the rest of the time it was amazingly temperate.
Day 1: Fun at Clyde’s
Today I woke up at 8:30 and I got my coffee made & fed the feral cat that lives outside and is fed by me. I told the cat I feed that I'd be going on vacation and he was as nonplussed as cats usually are.
My mom showed up about 11, we packed up the car, and we boogied out of there. Other than a stop at Bojangles and a stop for diesel (my mother’s car is a 1979 Mercedes Benz diesel car named Buttercup, so if you see any further references to Buttercup that’s what I’m referring to), we made remarkably good time and didn't run into all that much traffic on I-81 and I-66, but once we got off the highway into Reston, it was traffic city.
We stayed at the Crowne Plaza in Herndon, VA this night, and neither my mother nor myself liked the place enough to go back. The service was good enough but we weren’t thrilled with the room when we normally stay at the Marriott just across the road.
After checking in, we went over to Reston Town Center because we were meeting my grandparents (and my mother's father and stepmom) at Clyde's. Usually it's a favorite for all, but my mother and I ordered crabcakes that weren't up to our extremely high standards. But before that, we stopped off at Williams Sonoma (a dangerous store for the both of us) and we found a few things that we thought we might pick up later.
We stopped off at Trader Joe’s as well as Harris Teeter to find a few more items for our upcoming trip, then we went back to the Crowne Plaza and pretty much went right to sleep.
Day 2: Arrived at Ocean City and "Love that chicken from Popeye’s!”
I woke up at about 7:30 and my mother and I got ourselves ready for the beach trip. Got to Giant and got a number of the remaining items on our list of foodstuffs for the trip and then we pretty much got on the road towards Ocean City at about 9:30. Traffic was impressively light, especially over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge (which is usually pretty heavily trafficked) and we stopped at Denny's in Cambridge, MD for lunch.
After lunch (and another hour or so of driving) we got to the Golden Sands and met DCW who met us there, and after checking in, we started the long, long process of unpacking the car. While unpacking the car, I got this picture:
We brought lots of food and other things, and we still had to go to Walmart! We had a devil of a time finding the Walmart in Ocean City.
Pro Tip #1: Don't be fooled by the Home Depot sign. You actually turn off by the Home Depot sign, make a left when you can, and there it is. Very difficult to find if you don't know what you're doing.
After all of that, we stopped at Walmart and got the last bits of what we needed, and then we stopped at Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen for some fried chicken (yum). Then we made our way back to the condo at Golden Sands, ate our fried chicken, and went off to bed after I got a nice little gift: a new-to-me Samsung DV300F Smart Camera! (Hint: Some of the pics later on will be from this camera. I think it is a great little camera and one I’ll happily use on future trips… hint hint)
Day 3: The EatingRehoboth.com Food Tour! Yum!
Today started off at about 7:30 or so (sensing a pattern here) and had a nice bagel and cream cheese with some coffee, and played with my friend’s Kindle. Loved it, and I got one of my very own for Christmas, a Kindle Paperwhite 3G (which is fabulous BTW).
Pro Tip #2: The EatingRehoboth.com Food Tour runs between April and November every Tuesday and Friday. If you like the F&WF at WDW, then you might like this one. However, this is NOT a “fun for the whole family” kind of thing like it is at WDW. 21-and-over only because alcohol is served (in fairly copious amounts I may add).
We left about 11:00, because even tho we were meeting our tour group at 1:00 or so, we decided to go a bit slow (and we wanted to stop at CVS for a few things), and it's about 20-30 miles away from the condo where we were staying. So we stopped on the main drag of Rehoboth (Rehoboth Avenue), stopped in a few places (including the Del Sol store, which for the Disney nuts does actually have Disney items), and then went to the Bellmoor Inn & Spa to meet our group, and our host-with-the-most, Paul Cullen, who just so happens to be a former bassist for Bad Company back in the 90s.
Plus, he makes fabulous food-related alliterative name tags!
First we had a local hard apple cider. I can't ever pass up local apple cider, hard or not.
Then we went walking to our first destination: Mariachi. One of the better Mexican restaurants I've been to, and this was a major first for me: This was the first place I have ever had sangria. This was very enjoyable and the food (especially the chips and salsa) was marvelous.
This is the view from Mariachi’s upstairs balcony, which was actually cleared-out at that time.
Next we walked over to the main drag of Rehoboth and to a place I don't think I'd ever have gone into: Semra’s Mediterranean Grill.
It looks on the outside like it's just your basic boardwalk / main drag falafel joint, but the inside is verily surprising. They just did some renovating on the inside, and there's more to come from what Semra, the owner, was talking about. After a surprisingly light and fluffy kofta that I'm frankly in love with, and a delicious rice pilaf with a divine and perfectly seasoned homemade tomato sauce (yum yum), we moved on.
I had already polished off the kofta before I took this, LOL
After a wild story Paul told us about the Dolle's Saltwater Taffy machine being in the ocean after a particularly bad nor'easter and the 9 gas station tow trucks that were there at that time pulling the saltwater taffy machine out of the water, we went on to a new store in Rehoboth: The Spice and Tea Exchange. If you've never been in one of these it's basically like a Penzey's Spices store (if you have one of those near you) where they have jars of spices you can smell and see if you like them before you buy them. I got a few spices and we all got a sampler pack of goodies from there, and we moved on.
I took this on Thursday, but this is the place where we’d stopped that I was talking about.
Next was Espuma. It was interesting to say the very least, but the same guy who owns this really adventurous place where the menu changes all the time (but the paella we had does not because, according to the chef, his customers wouldn’t be thrilled if he took it off the menu) also owns a pub called Rose and Crown in Lewes (pronounced Lewis in case you wanted to know) and Cabo (Mexican place in Rehoboth).
Next was a place I frankly didn't care much for, called Victoria’s. Way too fancy for my tastes and we won’t be going back there. None of the other group members cared all that much for this place either.
The final place we stopped was A(Muse), another fun foodie restaurant. I took a few pics of Mari, the chef/owner of A(Muse), making our sorbets with an impressive demonstration that involves liquid nitrogen, along with a ton of amazingly good food, including some homemade gluten free pasta (!!) and some kind of rosemary champagne-type thing that was absolutely to die for.
Woo-hoo!
So after all of that, we all went our separate ways after saying our goodbyes, and one of the best days ever was capped off with a flourish worthy of all the food and drink we sampled.
Day 4: Ocean City Boardwalk and Assateague Island
Got up about 7:00 again and had a bagel, some cream cheese, and coffee and got to take a few pictures of the ocean from our balcony again, but I have some great ocean pics from Assateague that I will be throwing in below.
We left the condo about 10:00 and headed straight for Assateague Island via US-50.
After having gotten to Assateague, we drove in for awhile until we saw some of the famous Assateague Island ponies.
Pro Tip #3: Usually it’ll be sort of costly to go to the national seashore, BUT if you go on Veterans Day, it’s free. Not sure about other federal holidays but that’s something to know about for the future.
After doing a lot of beach combing and all that, and seeing OC in the distance, we went to OC proper.
Then, after a lunch at Applebee’s that nobody really enjoyed (and was much too expensive for the dinky items we got), we got to one of my favorite places and a must-hit on every OC trip I've ever taken: The Ocean City Boardwalk. However, not much was open.
But nothing was open!
I guess it was because it was Veterans Day or something... Who knows why there'd be like almost nothing open during the off season.
Pro Tip #4: Don’t take a child to the boardwalk in Ocean City not in-season. The boardwalk is best for children during the warm summer months when the Jolly Roger At The Pier is open along with all the arcades.
Anyways I got me some saltwater taffy from Dolle's and fudge from Candy Kitchen, played the Indiana Jones pinball from Stern Pinball (pic below) and went home sorely disappointed.
A little too short for me to play effectively, however
After getting back to the condo, I ate some of my Candy Kitchen fudge and just sat around and had lots of fun just being in OC!
Day 5: Just Being In The Condo
Today was just a condo day, where we just sat around and basically had a rest day. Which we all sorely needed. But this is a trip report where you’re interested in the places I go, so it is time to skip to the next day!
Day 6: Day 1 of 2 in Rehoboth Beach
Today we went into Rehoboth for the first of two days. The first thing we did was find the Walmart in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware to get a few more necessities.
Pro Tip #5: The Rehoboth Beach Walmart is quite a bit easier to find. It’s right off of Coastal Highway past Rehoboth Avenue about where the Tanger Outlets are if you’re interested in that. Also, don’t be fooled by its size on the outside… it’s sort of like the TARDIS from Doctor Who and is much bigger on the inside than you’re led to believe.
After our necessities were bought, we went to lunch at the Dogfish Head Brew Pub (the Dogfish Head brewery itself is not all that far away from Rehoboth Beach as a matter of fact) and while I had something I thought was highly forgettable and not worth writing home about, my mother and DCW had the most to die for fish & chips ever. My mother especially is a fish and chips fiend and she says the beer-battered fish and chips from the Dogfish Head Brew Pub are the best fish & chips she has ever had. I am inclined to agree wholeheartedly with her. Drooool.
So after that we walked around Rehoboth Ave (the main drag of Rehoboth Beach, DE) and got me a Rehoboth Beach, DE sweatshirt, and stopped over at Browseabout Books, one of the last independent booksellers in America. Quite frankly I was so enthralled with all the books I couldn’t even choose one, so I didn’t choose one. I chose a magazine and that was all I got over the two days we went there. One more disappointing aspect of today was that I didn’t get to have my Thrasher’s French Fries. More on that in a second here, because I am going to move on to our second Rehoboth day.
Day 7: Day 2 of 2 in Rehoboth Beach
First, we came into Rehoboth and stopped at the lighthouses along the way. Here’s just one of the dozens of pics I took there:
This lighthouse is unbelievably cool-looking up close!
Also we took the opportunity to walk along the beach a little bit here, and this is about where my new Facebook profile pic was taken:
And after we got into Rehoboth, we went here:
I know, all of you are just going to ask me, “How was the clams casino at Henlopen City Oyster House?” Excellent. Bob the Rehoboth Foodie steered me absolutely 100% right, and I could not be any happier with the place if I tried.
And of course, I finally, finally, finally got to have Thrasher’s French Fries!!
Now, I have to talk about one of the most incredible places in Rehoboth, or Ocean City for that matter, and that is Thrasher’s French Fries. To be honest, the fries normally wouldn’t be all that much to write home about, especially if you like your fries really crispy. I personally really don’t like fries that are really crispy, I like mine somewhere in the middle between soft/limp and crispy, but Thrasher’s always tends to be just right in the middle. Unfortunately for me I only got to eat Thrasher’s once on this trip because there were very few Thrasher’s locations that were open in the off-season (which denotes my Pro Tip below), and I thought it was well worth the disappointment the previous two times I tried to get Thrasher’s.
Pro Tip #6: The Thrasher’s in Rehoboth by the boardwalk IS open year round, although many places in Rehoboth actually are not usually open most days during the week when it isn’t the busy season. Go to ThrashersRehoboth.com for the Thrasher’s locations in Rehoboth, and ThrashersFrenchFries.com for the Ocean City locations.
Finally!
Anyways, we got a lot of saltwater taffy for me to take home and we left soon thereafter because we were going to be leaving the next day.
Final Wrap-Up and Miscellaneous Pictures
Every trip has to have a sad section, and this is it. We left the condo early on Day 8 because we were actually going to get out to Kents Narrows, MD for lunch (which is a tradition of sorts for my family when we leave OC/Rehoboth). So we ate a nice lunch at Kents Narrows and then moved on back to Reston, where we were breaking up the trip, staying at our favorite Marriott hotel again.
The next day, we finally, finally made it back home! I had so much fun on this trip that I cannot wait to go back to OC/Rehoboth!
Now, of course, there are many more pics that I probably could show you but I don’t think I’ll be able to show all of them! But what I can show you is what pics I did get on my new Samsung point-&-shoot camera and see if I can get more great pics on future trips with it! Even if it doesn’t show up on these small shots, once I get really fully used to this camera, this camera is going to be verily useful.
Samsung DV300F Pictures:
Not the best pic of the Rehoboth boardwalk but hey.
These are great example pics of the beach!
Other pics I didn’t include for one reason or the other:
I took much too many pictures of the ocean. I mean my goodness…
A picture of my empty Thrasher’s fry cup… Yes I am weird.
The views from our 20th floor balcony were amazing!
This is a view of the Assawoman Bay, which is on the other side of the OC main drag at this point (it’s above MD-90 if you’re wondering).
Another pic of the Henlopen City Oyster House, because why not.
My mom took this amazing picture of a seagull. Wowsers I wish I could take credit for that!!
As a final wrap-up, if you’re considering going to OC and Rehoboth (or heck, if you live in the area) and want to know a few new places to go), I would wholeheartedly recommend Henlopen City Oyster House, Semra’s, and Mariachi. Plus Thrasher’s and Candy Kitchen. Obviously.
One other thing I need to put out there: Renting a condo is probably the best and cheapest way to experience the area (certainly better than motels because they can vary wildly in price, especially during the busy season). We had a blast in the condo and we’re considering the same approach for a potential vacation later this year, so this is a great way to save some money while still having an absolute blast.
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