Wild, Wild Wildwood Days

Toni, Gilbert, Marie, Fifi and I decided to go to Wildwood-by-the-sea, New Jersey, for the weekend. It was decidedly a very American weekend, but with some Froggie flare.

The most obvious of differences was their disinterest in eating all the junk food Wildwood has to offer. Cheese steaks, hoagies, funnel cake, curley fries, ice cream, water ice…this didn’t interest the Frenchies one bit. Perhaps this is why French people generally don’t look like this:

So it was lonely for me, wanting to stuff my face whilst my French companions responded that they weren’t hungry, we’d just eaten, etc, etc. Blah blah blah.

Meanwhile, I wonder why I find myself shopping at Lerner New York & Co.

I digress. We stayed at The Jolly Roger Motel.

We used to stay at this very motel when I was a kid when we would come for a few days every summer with my aunts and cousins. I recall it being slightly run-down, with surly help behind the reception desk. It hasn’t changed at all. Really.

Mike, a squat man with serious facial hair art and a tattoo of Jesus on his forearm, was working the evening shift and definitely gave me his fair share of ‘tude. When there wasn’t a cot available for our use—after I called to confirm it twice before our arrival—he told me he didn’t care about our measly cot because he’d been to war and killed people. Needless to say, I didn’t know quite how to respond to that, so poor Toni had to sleep on the floor.

Despite that small setback, we had a great view of the shuffleboard and tennis courts from our balcony, and I slept better than I’ve slept in a long time.

We had beautiful weather. We went to the beach for part of the day and then spent the rest of the day going on rides. It was so great to act just like a kid for few hours.

We had two big showdowns on the go-cart course.

Fifi really showed us his moves; he passed everyone!

Then we went out for a mediocre, insanely overpriced seafood dinner, with yet again, surly help.

There is nothing quite like Wildwood anywhere on the planet so it didn’t really surprise me that the Frenchies found it pretty exotic and exciting. I was pretty surprised and excited to rediscover it for myself, and it is actually better than I remember! We were sad to leave, but we all said we’d be back. But we won’t be staying at the Jolly Roger next time.

Gros bisous à Toni pour ces photos là.