(no subject)

[rivka]

curiousangel and I went to the beach this weekend.

A beach resort is distinctly melancholy on a grey November day. The pastel hotels are meant to be framed against a cloudless blue sky, and the souvenir shops and restaurants need a constantly streaming backdrop of vacationers if they're not to look positively depressing. Driving past mile after mile of high-rise hotels and condos, all designed to pack in as many people as possible, all practically empty, I began to feel that I was in a post-apocalyptic movie.

But it was a lovely weekend anyway. curiousangel had to be there for work, and I went to keep him company. I did a lot of reading, a little outlet shopping, and a fair amount of napping. It was very peaceful.

Things I saw in Ocean City:
- Not one, not two, but four different restaurants prominently advertising that they served chipped beef. I'm not talking about a menu notation, I'm talking about a sign outside the building, or a mention in an advertisement. This included a place called "General's Kitchen - House of Chipped Beef."
- Fifteen-foot fiberglass dinosaurs rising over deserted miniature golf lots.
- Traffic signals with charming little U-turn arrows where an ordinary traffic signal has a left-turn arrow.
- Against my will, the world's scariest karaoke show.
- Crowds of blind children on ice skates.
- Cataclysmic rain, which combined with darkness and bald rear tires to provoke serious reflection on the state of my immortal soul. I was genuinely suprised to arrive in Ocean City without having a car accident on the way.
- A genuinely good restaurant, located inside a Holiday Inn, of all places.
- curiousangel at work, looking quite impressive with his voice recorder and his sharp navy blue suit.

Things I almost did not see in Ocean City:
- The ocean. But then I discovered that if I leaned my head against the window glass in our room and looked off to the side, I could just see a corner of slate-dark sea. With temperatures in the 40s and a strong cold wind blowing, I had no desire to go closer.

The genuinely good restaurant deserves a greater mention, because the majority of restaurants in Ocean City seem to focus on quantity rather than quality. Much is made in advertisements of the footage of all-you-can-eat buffets. I picked the Coral Reef restaurant for us to try (not knowing that it was inside a Holiday Inn) because it had the only tasteful ad in the Ocean City dining guide, and I hoped that boded well for the food. It did. The Coral Reef serves Floribbean cuisine in an elegant sand-colored dining room decorated with paintings of scenes from the life of Ernest Hemmingway. I had a marvelous crabmeat ceviche appetizer, served in a martini glass surrounded by taro and plantain chips. curiousangel made an even better choice: blackened scallops served with a tropical fruit salsa, made from pineapple, papaya, mango, red bell pepper, some sort of hot pepper, and onion. For an entree, I had jerked salmon served with the same tropical fruit salsa and some garlic mashed potatoes, and curiousangel had grilled mahi mahi with rum butter, grilled plantains and pineapple, and more garlic mashed potatoes. My jerk sauce could've been a bit less sweet and a bit more spicy, but on the whole, we were both quite pleased.