Chancing upon the Trump legacy in Atlantic City.

We’re so sad to leave New York City that we leave it one day early.

Doh.

We're suffering our first disaster on this epic road trip. It is the great peril of retirement. We often don’t know what day it is.

In this case, we have juggled dates and moved from our original schedule - and then forgotten that we have done it.

Doh, again.

We do not discover our error until lunchtime - following a lovely swim at

the Gansevoort’s gorgeous rooftop pool and a pleasant drive through the Sopranos' territory of New Jersey, marshes, and oil refineries.

It’s very flat land.

As we drive past Newark Airport, planes seem to be landing on roads right beside us. Well, they are. It is just that their roads are called runways.

South West planes are painted purple, red and orange. Aerial chic or aviation garish? Such are the profundities one ponders on the road.

As we rumble through a landscape of heavy industry, the NJ motto of The Garden State seems odd. But the marshes are green and pretty and when we get onto the seven-lane Garden State Parkway, well, this is the best road in the world. If it is not, it is my favourite road in the world. It is so smooth and leafy, sleek and forest-lined. Superbly maintained. It has no trucks.

We stop at one of those massive service areas for lunch. This is not a nice one. It has burgers and hot dogs and fried chicken, junk food rampant in confusing queues. We pick up cheap and nasty hamburgers and Bruce rings his old Yale roommate, Jim in Philadelphia, to liaise our imminent meeting in Cape May.

Except that, as Jim points out, it is not imminent. It is tomorrow.

We go into a flurry of damage control.

That’s why the room staff at the Gansevoort were cleaning the room when we came down from the pool. We were not on the departure list for another day. Oh, that lovely room is still ours. Is it too far to go back?

No going back, says Bruce.

Let’s have an adventure instead.

Let’s go to Atlantic City.

I whiz into my Expedia App and see what I can find for tonight.

Look, Bruce, this old golf resort looks romantic. Shall we? Two seconds later, Expedia whizzes a confirmation into my phone and off we go.

Sucking Strepsils as we drive. We’ve managed to bring that ubiquitous New York cough with us as a souvenir.

We pay tolls to very cheerful cashiers. It would seem to be an awful job yet they are so perky. We ponder this as we drive through fascinating pine forests. They are the Pine Barrens of New Jersey.

We remember scenes of them in The Sopranos.

Swamps and ponds. A sign to Little Egg Harbor.

Flat open land and a big horizon. A vast expanse. Yellow and green marshland. I love it.

We turn off to Galloway and find ourselves in big, green burbs.

And then we are at the Stockton Seaview Hotel which is set beside a golf course amid the marshes. It has a sweeping drive. It is very old-time resort grand.

Middle aged valets fall on us as we drive up and insist on unloading the luggage even when I am saying I’d rather wait until we’ve checked in. Prescient, as it turns out.

Across a vast expanse of lavish olde world lobby, I find the Reception desk and Heather who gives me the bad news. They don’t have the booking. It has not come through. I give them the Expedia reservation confirmation number.

Heather, the receptionist, says that Expedia has not sent it. No. It is not there. No, there is nothing she can do. And she won’t give us a different room because Expedia is pre-paid. Hmm. After much humming around, she promises to phone as soon as they have the room.

We have to leave the luggage with the valets.

We head off to kill time waiting for the call. We take a road to see the sea.

It turns into a rough, pot-holed dirt road through reeds to a little marshy boat ramp and a nice view of Atlantic City across the water. I get out of the car to take a photo. A couple of desultory seagulls are hanging out there, along with a lot of vicious biting flies. I get back in the car.

We decide to take the plunge and drive into Atlantic City itself.

The road is appalling. There are

great windmills and several spectacular buildings, a glorious golden round one called Bongok. Billboards all along the road proclaim the Trump Taj Mahal. Lucie Arnaz is promoted in concert. Lucille Ball’s daughter. How interesting.

There’s a huge white elephant on the road into Atlantic City. Another promotion for the Trump joint. It towers on the horizon.

We drive through some scruffy backstreets looking for the famous boardwalk.

Now we’re passing the entrance to the Taj Mahal. And, what’s this? Industrial action? It is surrounded by strikers, all in red shirts and waving placards declaring that they are being denied their proper work conditions.

Well, this is a big red flag to an old journo bull.

Finding a street carpark, we head off the meet the strikers.

It is meltingly hot.

Many of them are sitting on a low wall while others take turns at the active picketing. I sit

down with the most articulate of them. A lovely African American fellow who worked in one of the casino’s restaurants as a baker. He told of cut hours, no holidays, overwork, underpay, insecure conditions with no contracts. The casino does not belong to Trump any more. It was sold off after bankruptcy. But he did give contracts to his workers.

The strikers ask us to report on what things are like inside the casino. Since we are going in there for a snoop anyway, we agree.

It is fairly quiet inside. But, oh, so huge and glittering. I never saw so many chandeliers. I never saw such big chandeliers.

A few croupiers are at tables. But there are scores and scores of tables. So much gambling real estate. And, oh, the slot machines!

Pokies….acres of them. I mean acres. Very few people playing them. It is like a winking, blinking, bright electric wilderness.

We walk seemingly for miles inside the casino, exploring the upstairs arcades and the restaurants. The upstairs corridor is like a long, carpeted street, so long and hollow that a lonely security guard is patrolling it by Segway.

There are restaurants with big Closed signs. There's a theatre. Of course, that is where Lucie Arnaz will perform. Dark now, of course. She is not billed for months yet. Finally, we potter out and report in to the strikers. They say Tuesdays are usually slow, anyway.

And we move on to take a walk on the famous Atlantic City boardwalk.

It is ghastly hot.

It is not too busy. There are lots of ticky tack shops. One after another, packed side by side.

Usually, I love ticky tack. I am a sucker for kitsch and seaside souvenirs. I am looking for a tank top.

I find not a solitary thing I would want to buy. Bruce sits in the sun while I make little forays. There are surly Indian shopkeepers at the rear

of each store. Their prices are very high and their stock is very inferior. I see a plaintive sign above one shop “American owned” and I realise that these miles of commerce are the new face of the Atlantic City boardwalk.

We return to the car and drive through the Atlantic City suburbs, which are fascinating. They extend out into another township called Ventnor. Flowering trees. Topiary.

Flags. They’re lavish homes and holiday houses reaching beyond opulence into the realms of palatial. Grotesquely fanciful. Over some immeasurable top. Oh, look into that one with the vast bay window. There’s a grand piano. The furniture is all gilded. Move over Louis XIV.

We drive down some side streets to the water and find that the marvellous boardwalk is still going. It goes all the way from Atlantic City along the coast. How superb. The beach is all swept and smooth. The sand it coarse and dirty and very, very hot. People are down near the water’s edge. I have to feel the water. Bruce does not.

The hotel still has not called. Hours have passed. We are tired and a big woggy. We really want home comforts. I call the hotel. No, no news. Nothing from Expedia. They are supposed to be sending a fax but they don’t have it. Perhaps I would like to call Expedia. This is all very odd. Expedia has been very efficient in the past. On a number of occasions I have had the impression that hotels do not like it very much and do not give its customers the best treatment, but Expedia, along with booking.com, have been exemplary. A fine service for the traveller.

I try to call. I get through to an Australian number and am presented with a lot of options to key in. I realise that the confirmation number is in the phone and I am on the phone. I hang up to access the number. Then I ring the hotel number by mistake and speak to a man who says Heather has gone home and, yes, he has the booking and the room is ready.

Relief.

We hurtle back to the hotel.

It is a very faded grandeur old thing. The lobbies are expansive and one has to cross several to reach the reception desk. We check in and the valet brings our luggage and escorts us to the room - which is a long way. This place is immense.

No, he can’t take the loaded luggage trolley into the room. He has to unload in the hall and bring everything in piece by piece. There is a lot of it, since the overkeen valets had zealously unloaded everything from the car.

This is quite a performance. I note that the room smells very musty and that the beds are a bit dishevelled.

Looks like someone was sitting there, says the valet as he disappears down the hall. Er, yes. And there is stuff in the bins. And the soap is unwrapped.

I call reception.

We’ll send the maid. Do you want to swap.

Look at all the luggage, mutters Bruce. Too hard. The maid arrives and flurries around sprucing the room.

The room otherwise is OK. It is a decent two double bed room. Not much of a view.

But it is just one night.

We make the most of it.

It does smell musty, though. I spray with Fabreeze and Lysol airfresh.

I travel with an armoury of fragrances since I have an annoyingly sensitive sense of smell. It runs in my mother’s bloodline with our super-smeller schnozzles affectionately known from her family name as “Hutton buttons”.

We have booked a table downstairs, thinking with all the sporty seniors we see going to and fro in the lobbies that we will need a reservation. When we get down, the grand dining room is a sea of beautifully-set tables, but it is not in use. We are directed to the bar grill where an older wait person is loudly apologising to a diner for serving him an undercooked burger. Hmm.

A beautiful young African American girl shows us to a corner table where we have a good view of the room. I order a dry martini. It has been a jangling day.

We watch the older waiter thundering about the place. Shades of Fawlty Towers. He was not born for this job. He is loud and anxious. Our lovely laid-back girl, on the other hand, might well have another job. She tends to us in sporadic cheerful visits from somewhere behind the scenes. The food is pretty good and we are enjoying the theatre of this high-ceilinged wood-pannelled room. There are wonderful old 1940s menus from the hotel’s heydays on the wall. Grand old days when a lobster thermidor cost $4 and Eastern Diamondback turtle was featured on the menu. We imagine the elegant New Yorkers converging here on rich and chic sporting vacations, dressing expensively for every activity. The downstairs dining rooms, lobbies, parlours seem drenched in redolent spirit.

We go naughty and order the chef’s dessert assortment and swoon for a while. Lovely. The waitress has vanished again. The old chap is thumping dangerously about with trays and serving tables, a teatowel over his shoulder.

It has been such a pleasant sojourn that I am quite taken-aback in rediscovering the musty smell of our room.

Bruce is not worried by it. It’s not dangerous, Sa. It is just damp. It is not mould. You’ll get used to it. It is way too hard to change rooms now.

He just wants to hit the pit. He is out like a light in minutes.

I do more air spraying and stay up watching TV and writing. Ugh, that smell.

I get into the bed and try to snuggle up. Something is wrong. I can’t warm the feet. They feel clammy. Damp? Oh, this bed is somehow just cold and strangely moist. The musty smell seems to be coming from under it. I get my travel quilt and sarong and make myself a bed on top of the bed. Ugh, that smell. The New York cough stirs up to meet it.

It is the night from hell. At about 3am, in desperation I take an emergency sleeping pill.

Thank heavens the morning is sunny and the hotel has a wonderful old swimming pool.

Sun and swim cures all things, raises the spirits. We enjoy the faded grandeur of the hotel once again and loll about for as long as we can before succumbing to the compulsory services of the hotel’s pushy old valet. It is a full service hotel, he explains. We do everything for you.

I tell the reception desk that the room they allocated to us is uninhabitable and they need to strip it and renovate. They seem indifferent.

Well, says Bruce, you can’t say it wasn’t an adventure.