Life After Work: Birthday On The Beach

We were awakened Friday morning by bright sunlight sneaking around the curtains. When we looked out, we could see a prefect blue sky over the ocean. Marilyn wanted to walk on the beach to start her birthday, so we went out to do that. There were only joggers, walkers and bike riders out for the most part.

This one shows the Trump Plaza, where we're staying, and the Boardwalk Hall. More about that later.

Here's Marilyn either contemplating life or looking for sea shells!

And this is our beach shadow selfie!

We passed by a little tidal pool area where this really interesting sand pattern had formed.

They seem to be planting more of the dune grasses and protecting the grasses that are already there. The beach and boardwalk are also kept very clean.

Next on our list was a birthday breakfast. I had researched a bit about good breakfast places and a place called Gilchrist's got a lot of mentions. It's about a ten minute drive from the boardwalk in an area near a marina and has been in business since 1946. We loved it and both had an omelet like this. Best homefries I've eaten too!

After a drive along the coast and back, we rushed over to the Boardwalk Hall where there was a free organ concert and tour. The Hall was built in the late 1920s and started hosting the Miss America Pageant in 1932. We had no idea that this was the location. Unfortunately, Lady Gaga is coming to do a performance so they couldn't play the big organ because it would disturb the workers who were setting things up. But we learned that the organ has over 33 000 pipes and is the biggest one in the world. It is currently being restored after decades of not being used. The cost will be over $14 million and will take another 9 years. We did hear a performance on a smaller, but still very impressive, organ. Then we had a tour to see the inner workings of the big organ and the workshop where it is being fixed. Here, we're on the stage where the Miss America contestants did their stuff. I was imagining my speech about kittens, puppies and world peace!

This is in the organ fixing workshop.

This is the control console for the main organ. It has an incredible number of keys and buttons.

We decided that after a healthy breakfast and all of yesterday's eating that we'd walk instead of eating lunch. There is an International Sandcastle competition running this weekend so we went to check it out. There are competitors from all over the world and we saw the beginnings of some amazing pieces of sand art.

In the background of this one you can see the Steel Pier which is basically a collection of carnival games and rides. We decided not to go on any of the rides as they all looked like they would cause varying degrees of motion sickness!

Here's another view of the Boardwalk with the Taj Mahal in the foreground. We'll be heading out past here to go to dinner tonight.

On to the birthday dinner! As Marilyn said halfway through our meal, "Good thing we didn't eat lunch!" This was about 2 courses after I wondered if I'd made a mistake in ordering the Chef's Tasting Menu at Amada. We were in the Revel Hotel and the restaurant is owned by Jose Garces who is an Iron Chef. The restaurant was beautiful and overlooked the ocean.

The tasting menu was four courses that seemed more like eight as the food just kept coming. The first items out were Jamon Iberico, olives, manchego cheese, apple and lavender honey.

Next up was a plate of grilled octopus and potatoes. Even if you have never had octopus before, you would love this. It's inspiried me to try some octopus on our grill at home.

I was a bit worried as the next dish appeared. It was obiously a bowl of peppers with a sauce. I imagined them to be firey hot and then I'd be eating all of them myself! Our server was back to explain the dish and said that only 1 in 10 of these peppers were actually hot. I tried the first one and it was very hot! The sauce was ground red peppers with almonds and seasoning. Marilyn ate the next one and it was mild as were all the rest.

A flatbread with manchego cheese, shrimp and chorizo came next. It was delicious.

The next dish was really two and consisted of patatas bravas (potatoes with spicy tomato sauce and paprika) and grilled scallops with pesto.

Our server told us that the main course was next! We were a bit worried at this point but we managed to eat most of it! We had a grilled rib eye with three sauces and a type of risotto with peas, asparagus wild mushrooms and truffle oil.

And, we still had to deal with dessert which, fortunately, was pretty light. It was olive oil cake with figs and ginger ice cream. All in all, an excellent birthday dinner!

After dinner, we wandered around the hotel on the outside and found a deck that overlooked the ocean. It's a beautiful, relatively new, hotel but is apparently about to go bankrupt! Even though Hurricane Sandy didn't do a lot of physical damage to the boardwalk area, business has fallen off sharply in many places.