When Sesame Place opened its gates twenty-five years ago in Langhorne, Pennsylvania, I was eight -- young enough to badly want to go but too old for an elementary school class trip to a theme park whose educational content consisted of plastic ball pits and giant rope ladders. So while my little brother got to go, I was stymied... until last week. The park has added many attractions since 1980, most of them water- and/or Elmo-based, as two things children cannot get enough of is splashing around and the furry red menace who has come to dominate the Sesame Street milieu. Though there are a couple of rides (a roller coaster and a flume-like waterslides) specifically geared to big kids and adults, Sesame Place has successfully maintained a focus on the toddler and preschool set, which means Baby Exile had a ball. And so did I! When I finally buried myself neck-deep in stinky plastic balls, I had achieved a kind of closure after all these years, although I have to admit that the rope ladders almost killed me. Whether you're three or thirty-three, Sesame Place is not for the weak.
Next up was a trip to Swedish furniture giant IKEA -- who has yet to open a store in Massachusetts (although I've read that one is coming to Stoughton, Mass in the Fall) -- which was perhaps just as exciting as my long-awaited romp with Grover, Telly, and Snuffaleupagus, if not more so, thanks to a cafeteria that served Swedish meatballs with lingonberry sauce and all-you-can drink lingonberry juice from the soda fountain. Mmmmmmm. Lingonberry. For less than a hundred dollars we were able to redecorate Baby Exile's room with a Murmel bed tent, a Vimsig stars-and-moon mobile, and a couple of collapsible nylon shelves. Those Swedes sure know how to do affordable design! And their company is one of the most progressive employers in the United States, so even though most of the merchandise is from China (what isn't these days?) you know at least the employees are getting living wages, comprehensive benefits, and a positive work environment.
The other half of the day was spent visiting Citizens Bank Park, new home of the Philadelphia Phillies since the demolition of South Philly eyesore Veterans Stadium last year. Alas, the game was ultimately rained out, but we did catch an inning of play and managed to wander the new venue's concourse with its many shops, eateries, and attractions. I did not, however, get a chance to eat a cheesesteak from Geno's, which now maintains an outpost at the ballpark (no word on whether Pat's will follow suit), although we did get some decent cheesesteaks later on in the week.
After our Philadelphia hijinks we then made a mad dash from the Delaware Valley to the Lehigh Valley to the Susquehanna Valley then back again to the Delaware as we attempted to visit two sets of Mrs. Exile's cousins. We had hoped initially to include some Pennsylvania Dutch stops into the trip, or perhaps a visit to the Conrad Weiser Homestead (something I've been meaning to do ever since I learned about this fascinating diplomat from Colonial American history), but since no one took the courtesy of informing us that the State of Pennsylvania had apparently decided to resurface all of their highways at once this summer, we spent all of our "free" time sitting in traffic snarls. There's nothing worse than being stuck bumper-to-bumper on the outskirts of Allentown, where you could just as easily put the car into four wheel drive and take to the pastures, provided that you watched out for the occasional cow. But the visits were more than worth it -- we're getting to that point where the responsibility for keeping the families together is on our shoulders and not our parents', and even though we Exiles live seemingly at the end of the world we're determined not to be strangers to our own relatives.
The rest of the week was all about the Jersey Shore. After spending a brilliant afternoon on the beach at Strathmere -- a tiny seaside resort which has managed to preserve the old-time shore town atmosphere that its neighbors have eschewed for condos and ocean view trophy homes -- we took to the boardwalk of Ocean City, our traditional family haunt which the Travel Channel had recently given the nod to as one of 2005's best summer destinations. Who knew? Perhaps the national exposure explained the absolutely insane amount of people walking the boards on a Thursday night. Fortunately the crowds didn't deter us from getting our requisite fill of Mack and Manco's, who make the best plain pizza on the planet, and spending a small fortune in tickets to keep Baby Exile riding the kiddie amusements until way after her bedtime. I couldn't believe at times that I was watching my own daughter enjoy some of the same rides I myself had as a kid! Perhaps its that kind of timewarp nostalgia that keeps people coming back year after year to "America's Greatest Family Resort"...
The next morning we paid a visit to the Cape May County Park and Zoo, which although smaller than most city zoos is perfectly situated amidst the Pine Barrens, smartly designed with displays offering close-up encounters and boardwalks crisscrossing the larger habitats, and all in all a damned pleasant way to spend the day. Baby Exile still doesn't quite get the concept of the zoo, so she was slow to warm to the idea of walking around and looking at animals, but fortunately the park had both a regular and toddler playground, so we were able to fire up her enthusiasm whenever it threatened to flag. The funny thing is that the creatures she was most enamored with were the white-tailed deer, one of the few animals on display that we could have just as easily seen driving along the highway! And for some reason she kept insisting that they were "horsies". Well, as long as she enjoyed herself.
Then it was time to leave the little one with my dad and head to Atlantic City for the evening. We hadn't visited A.C. since the year before last, and we'd heard there had been quite a few changes in our absence -- for starters, the casinos had finally woken up to the fact that they were located along the water and opened up several tiki bars on the beach. I have to say it was absolutely surreal sitting on a bar stool in the open air, drinking a beer and looking at the surf to my left and the neon jumble of the boardwalk to my right! We also checked out one of the newest offerings in town: The Quarter at the Tropicana Hotel and Casino, a suprisingly tasteful homage to Old Havana chock full of shops and swanky bars and eateries. We drank mojitos at Cuba Libre, ate Chinese food at P.F. Chang's, and browsed the various storefronts before remembering that we were in a casino and hadn't yet lost so much as a nickel gambling.
I say a nickel because nickel slots are all the rage again, thanks to a new generation of all-electronic machines which look and feel like a video game and allow a player to gamble anywhere from five cents to a little under four bucks on a single pull and even offer playable "mini-games" which are unlocked by certain winning combinations. When these slots first started to appear in casinos a few years back I had pooh-poohed them, but after having fed a few dollars into them this visit I have to admit that they have a way of drawing you in that the old faux-mechanical machines (even the most old-fashioned looking of slot machines nowadays are governed not by mechanical principles but the same random number generators which are networked throughout the casino to ensure a guaranteed percentage of payout against the overall take. So don't buy into the notion that a given machine on the floor is "due" because it hasn't paid out in a while -- theoretically a slot never has to pay, so long as others in the casino do!). The success of these slots have even brought back penny machines!
At this point, what else was there left to do in Jersey but fish? So fish we did. Though I'm unhappy to report that I caught nothing but blue crabs, other members of the family proved to be a little luckier on the cast:
That's my girl!
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