Another beach vacation is in the books! We got back yesterday from two weeks in Ocean Grove, my favorite little town on the Jersey shore. My husband and I had stumbled on this little Victorian enclave early in our marriage, and first rented a cottage there during the summer of 2006. We haven’t gone there every year since, but it has been a lot of years. We rented a house in 2017 that we really liked, so we have then rented it for a week or two every summer from 2019-2025.
I like going new places, but there is also something to be said for going to the same place over and over again. The kids all know “their” rooms (though they sometimes switch) and we have all our favorite spots in town.
This year we went to a lot of them, with some new stuff thrown in. Old standbys include going to Day’s Ice Cream most nights (with lines down the street…it is very good!), and to the Silverball arcade in Asbury (a pinball “museum” of old machines where you pay one price and then can play all of them). I go for long runs on the boardwalk. In recent years we’ve started going to Toast in Asbury for brunch some days, and my 15-year-old and I like Cousins Maine Lobster, which has an outpost on the Asbury boardwalk. My 18-year-old developed a fondness for the vanilla iced lattes with oat milk at Odyssey coffee in Ocean Grove. My husband and I had a nice dinner at Sea Grass in town, and all of us ate at the Iron Whale in Asbury, which was very good. I also wound up going to Zenith Workspaces inland a bit — I had to do some podcast interviews and the beach wifi was kind of spotty! That was kind of fun, commuting to my little office.
I also enjoyed going for some long walks through Ocean Grove. The town is just incredibly cute, with many of the residents creating elaborate gardens in their small yards. Because the size of the yards is so small, the town is very walkable. Plus there are all the “tents” — an Ocean Grove phenomenon. And I spent a lot of time sitting on the amazing porch of our rental house, looking at the ocean. We built sandcastles, went in the waves, etc.
Of course while we were there, Hurricane Erin was coming up the Atlantic. The result was that it was really windy and rainy for a while, and the surf was so high that the beach was closed. That was something, watching those huge waves. So we did a lot of our back-to-school shopping (Kohls, Target and Old Navy) there inland a ways instead of waiting to do this after coming back home.
Ocean Grove is only 90 minutes from my house (my husband went back and forth some for work, and my 15-year-old for cross country practice, which has started). It is also not that far from NYC — my map app claims it is only an hour and 15 minutes from my old apartment in the city. Sure, I’m writing this at 6 a.m., so rush hour would be worse. But so is rush hour to the Hamptons! I know people are definitely in 2-plus hours of traffic getting there.
And so every time we go to Ocean Grove, I’m struck by how different the northern NJ beaches are vs. somewhere like Southhampton. Ocean Grove is all developed, but it is only about a square mile. Coming back from Target, I can be 1-1.5 miles away from our rental, and I’m passing things like a vape shop, a restaurant supply warehouse, an auto parts store, etc. In other words, not very gentrified commerce. When you are a mile away from the beach in the Hamptons, you are in the middle of multi-million dollar vacation homes. I also know that a lot of people from our part of the Philly suburbs go south to Ocean City and Avalon and all that — which are also farther than the northern beaches (which are a straight shot on I-276, a short jaunt up the NJ turpike, then straight over on I-195 through NJ). I guess certain beach areas become the cool place to go and then everyone goes there.
But I’m glad to have our more undiscovered gem! The kids mostly had a good time — some complaints at times, especially about the closed beaches. But we made memories and I know that because we’ve gone there many times, those memories will be made stronger. So, here’s to summer 2026! (I hope! The house is a rental so things can happen but I’m hoping we can continue the tradition.)
Nodding my head in agreement with your thoughts on returning to a place year after year, as I write this from a waterfront unit in Door County, Wisconsin. I have stayed many places on this charming peninsula through the years. But for the past four years, we’ve gone to the same resort rental and even requested the same unit. We couldn’t get that unit this year, so we’re same resort, different unit. It took us a whole day to get settled into the new place. Different room configuration from the other unit threw us at first. Where to put our device chargers, why is everything topsy-turvy? Ha-ha. But now, two days in, we have settled and are enjoying an unobstructed water view of the harbor, which we don’t have from our usual unit. I’m sure there’s a message in there somewhere about changing things up, sometimes, but I’m not going to try to decipher it now. I’ll just keep looking at the water view and figure out which of our many “must dos” we will do today!
I think I have commented before that we have been to the same seaside cottage on the east coast of Kintyre, looking across to Arran in south west Scotland 15 times now, the first time when our now 25 year old was 3 and her 21 year old sister hadn’t even been conceived! The cottage has a fantastic set of logbooks dating back to when it first became a Landmark Trust property in the 1990s and one of my favourite things to do when we are there is to read back all the entries we have written over the years, and then read what everyone else who has stayed since our last time there has had to say about it. The last twice we went before this summer we were also able to take older daughter’s fiancé and he fell in love with the place too. We had a fantastic week there in July, best weather ever, sea swimming wasn’t even that painful! This was our first time in the summer since that first visit, and the first for a long time when no one had homework to do, exams to revise for, dissertations they were supposed to be writing but weren’t etc. But on the subject of changing it up, in January 26 we are booked for a week just the two of us, neither daughter joining us. It will be very different without them, but I hope equally enjoyable, and not too many ghosts of holidays past! There is something very special about returning so often to such a lovely place with so many memories.
Ooh that sounds lovely. My husband grew up spending every holiday on Arran, but I’m a delicate soul when it comes to ferries, and he tends to go with his mum and our son. Someplace where we could see Arran but not have to endure any CalMac drama or seasickness sounds ideal. In a moment of sanity, I agreed to do a February Newcastle to Amsterdam overnight ferry. All the thoughts and prayers.
We spent two weeks every summer and Christmas at my parents in Portugal and it feels so nice to have the routine.