Glitz on a budget

People who live near Atlantic City realize that you can often get free or nearly free rooms in AC, especially during the cold winter months. The casinos just want to get people in the doors, because they obviously have a much better chance of enticing people to spend money gambling if they can get them there in the first place.

So it's a pretty cheap getaway if you use the offers.

We used one Friday night. We had dinner at home and then drove to AC and checked into the Taj Mahal. The Trump Taj Mahal. I am so not a fan of The Donald, but I didn't feel that I was particularly subsidizing his business by taking advantage of this offer.

I hoped for an oceanview room, but we had a view of the sound, with the golden Borgata shimmering in the distance.

And closer to us, a nice view of the wavy reflections in the windows of the Taj Tower.

AC is all about glitz and shimmer and size and gold. It is amusing for a few hours. At the Taj, even the house phones are gold.

And the bathrooms in the hotel rooms are enormous, particularly the shower stalls, which could easily hold 5-6 people.

And there are always lots and lots of mirrors.

The other thing that distinguishes casinos from other places is that indoor smoking is allowed; sometimes it even seems to be encouraged. This seems a bit shocking to Americans who have become accustomed to the nearly universal ban on indoor smoking everywhere else. At the casinos, they apparently expect people to smoke even in bathroom stalls.

On Saturday morning we had breakfast at a restaurant in the casino, Plate. I had the asparagus and crab omelette. It was not good. I think it was a microwaved premade omelette. The crab was undetectable. Even worse, the coffee was tasteless. Bummer.

On the other hand, breakfast was free, due to the special deals. But bad or mediocre food, even free, is not such a great bargain.

The only food we needed to purchase was decent coffee at a coffeeshop. We had brought along yogurt, Clif bars, and bananas for Saturday's lunch.

The pool was pretty nice, and not crowded.

The murals in the pool room were funny. I wonder what Indians would think of them.

The other thing we did during this little getaway was watch the movie Melancholia. We began watching it on Friday night, and finished it in two sessions on Saturday, before and after the swim. This is an odd way to watch a movie - more like the way you read a book, over a period of days or weeks. It gave us the opportunity to discuss it between viewings. An interesting movie - part of the premise is that seriously depressed people act well during emergencies, because they already expect everything to go wrong. So they don't get even more depressed -- unlike optimistic people, who are gobsmacked by catastrophes. (The catastrophe in this movie is the end of the world.)

A good combination for a quick getaway - a pool in the middle of winter, a movie with enough mystery in it to make you think a little, a touch of goofy glitz, a short drive, and not much money spent. If only breakfast had been tasty!