My recent vacation in New Jersey

amother

Wed, Aug 01 2012, 11:47 am

I had a very nice vacation and thought I would share it with others to give ideas.

My husband and I had a wedding to go to in Lakewood. We live far from there and didn't want to drive there and back in one day. We had our kids sleep at my parents that night, and drove to Lakewood for the wedding. After the wedding we drove north for about 45 minutes to Red Bank, NJ, to stay at the Molly Pitcher Inn (thanks imamother.com!). The hotel is on a lake. We bought beer at the bar and drank it outside overlooking the lake. Our room was $217 with all taxes included, and the beers were $12 total.

The next morning, we drove into town (2 minutes tops, it's even walkable from the hotel) and bought coffee and donuts (packaged) for breakfast. We ate breakfast at a park on the lake that was beautiful. Then we went back to the hotel for a short swim. The pool was empty (it was a weekday morning) and I wore my swim dress.

Then we drove to Deal (25 minutes), walked around a bit, and had lunch at the Chocolate Soda restaurant. This was interesting because it was crowded with native people that live or summer in Deal and I felt like I was crashing a private party. Also the food was not to our taste, so I would suggest finding a different kosher restaurant in Deal. Then we drove around to look at the beachfront homes (gorgeous). We didn't have time to go to the beach because my husband had to go back to work for a meeting. However the beach looked really nice (we didn't go to any area that had bathers).

Other ideas that I stumbled across in my research - there is a bed and breakfast in Deal itself, called the Cedars and Beeches, that offers a prepackaged kosher breakfast. It's pretty close to the beach, but not walkable. Also it doesn't have a pool (that's why we didn't stay there). Another idea was the Ocean Place resort - it is on the water near Deal. It was fully booked, so we couldn't stay there. I heard it's really nice, but the rooms are around $350 a night.