The parking situation was a nightmare. We were no...

The parking situation was a nightmare. We were not about to spend $20 to park, so we drove around maybe 10 minutes until we found free street parking. We had to walk, maybe, 4 blocks, so it wasn't too bad....totally worth NOT paying to park!

The beach was pretty clean, not too crowded for a Saturday afternoon. Definitely NOT happy that we had to pay $9 a person to get on the beach, and you can't even go in the water after 530 when the lifeguards leave. I understand maybe not after dark or swim at your own risk after the lifeguards leave, but since we didn't get to go actually on the beach until 2pm, then to find out we couldn't be there (in the water) more than a few hours...we weren't real happy. We also realized, apparently after 4pm or so there's no one "manning" the stations to pay, so I guess if you go after 4, you don't have to pay? Wish I would have known that...I would have killed a couple of hours and just not paid and gone in for only an hour or so than pay $9!

Not impressed at the boardwalk at all, except for Joey's Tomatoes Pizza place. Delicious and somewhat reasonably priced based on being right on the boardwalk. ($3.75 for large plain cheese slice or $20 for very large pie.) There were a lot of carnival game type stands and I think I might have counted 4 arcade type (overkill) and the boardwalk is pretty small, maybe 3 or 4 blocks. So with all the game stands, it doesn't leave a lot for much of anything else except a souvenir shop here and there.