Brian’s Outtake’s

Who knew there was this suburban, semi-rural little outpost just 11 miles from the Walt Whitman bridge into downtown Philly?

But first, let me backtrack a little. We finally arrived in Danbury, CT on Friday, the destination on our eastbound journey. The wedding on Saturday was a blast.

 

Picture 1: We had lunch with the groom’s dad Saturday before the wedding – he’s the one laughing with the Hooker I ordered.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Picture 2: During the wedding ceremony, I managed to catch a picture of one of the groom’s friends, Fabrizio Goldstein, the dude with the ‘erection’ (self-description) coiffure who is a cable TV personality known as The Fat Jew. You could look it up.

(Brian doesn’t’t know about hyperlinks in blogs, so:

http://nypost.com/2014/06/24/meet-instagram-sensation-the-fat-jew/

Picture 3 – huh?: We stayed at the Ethan Allen Inn, furniture book in every room. Cute little map in our goody bag. Had to buy something from Utz. We lived in York, Pa. for 6 months after we were first married and at some point went through a little town where there’s an Utz chip factory. Smelled like you were driving through a giant bag of potato chips. Living there would ruin chips for me.   I love opening a bag of Lays and getting that first.                                    whif. And that brings up the battle of potato chips.

If you live west of Pennsylvania you’ve probably never heard of Wise Potato Chips (unless you’ve seen ads on outfield walls in eastern stadiums). When we moved to Colorado in 2001 we missed Wise Potato Chips. We missed the browned and burnt ones.Lays were too perfect. But now we’ve come back, compared, and concluded that we like the taste of Lays more. Go figure.

 

Enough of the ancient past. That was last weekend. Tuesday night we had dinner with Andrea’s sister, husband and kids in the best Italian restaurant in Philadelphia, Villa D’Roma. That’s just my opinion and admittedly I haven’t eaten in any other Italian restaurant in Philly, but, we ate there earlier this year and loved it so much I asked to go back. Classic Italian. No fancy-schmancy stuff. Excellent again.

We’re staying at a nice, reasonably priced campground just 25 minutes from downtown Philly, Timberlane Campground in Clarksboro, NJ. Sites are really small. We’re surrounded by behemoths like ours. But, great location for a big city (with tiny little streets). For you RVer’s, a little advice: DO NOT TRY TO BRING A BIG RIG INTO SOUTH PHILLY. Trust me on this.

And, if you find yourself in need of fabric Fleishman’s Supplies is The Place to go. Friendly, expert service with the best smiles and they can really give you a deal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pic 5: Today, Thursday, 9/11, we went to Atlantic City. What a disappointment it’s become. Four casinos have closed this year, Trump Plaza next week and the Trump Taj Mahal will shut down in November. They have casinos in Philly now. The food was bad, drinks were ridiculously priced ($12 for a martini in a plastic cup filled with ice – WTF?), and service was so bad in two places that we walked out. The good news was that we’re in the midst of the Miss America pageant preliminary rounds. Big show Sunday night. We happened to be on the boardwalk outside Trump Plaza when the doors opened for ticket holders of tonight’s preliminaries. On the boardwalk we passed several of the obvious (in contrast to the tourists and local dirt bags) contenders with fans and family on their way in. Miss Mississippi was wearing her state banner. We thought about buying a ticket for about 2 seconds.

That’s all for now.