By Jonathan Tannenwald, Philly.com producer
Greetings from the other side of the Cape May-Lewes Ferry -- Rehoboth Beach, to be precise. I’ve spent just about every summer of my life there, and I have much the same kinds of connections to its boardwalk that the other Downashore writers have to the Jersey side of things.
I went down to Rehoboth for the first time this summer this past weekend to surprise my father for Father’s Day. I usually go by car, but I decided to try something new this time. There’s a bus that runs on weekends from the Wilmington Amtrak station down to the Park & Ride lot out by the outlets for $7.50 each way. It’s run by DART, the Delaware public transit agency. So I caught the 5:33 p.m. R2 out of Suburban Station last Friday and decided to give the Route 305 bus a shot.
It was quite a pleasant trip. Just under two hours from start to finish on a modern, Greyhound-sized bus instead of a city-style bus – but much cleaner. There wasn’t a bathroom, but it was a short enough ride to not make much of a difference. Best of all, the bus got to Rehoboth right on time, and there’s an easy connection to Route 201, which takes you down Rehoboth Avenue to the bandstand.
The intermediate stops on Route 305 are Christiana Mall (a great mall, by the way), Smyrna, Dover (near Delaware Tech) and Milford. The bus actually starts at Rodney Square in Wilmington, so if you’re coming from there that might be of interest to you.
Coming back, the ride was just as easy – for a while. Unfortunately, the bus overheated and broke down near Odessa. We were able to get to a park-and-ride lot, and thankfully, we only had to wait about 25 minutes for the new bus to come.
There were quite a few regular riders on the bus, and they told me that this was the first time they’d ever seen this. So I’m willing to give DART the benefit of the doubt – but of course the breakdown happened on the trip I wanted to write up for the blog.
We got to the Amtrak station a few minutes before 11 p.m., about an hour late overall. Fortunately for one of the other riders, it was just enough time to catch the last Chinatown bus to New York.
Unfortunately for me, I had to wait a while for an Amtrak train, as the R2 doesn’t run all the way down to Wilmington on the weekends. But the whole round trip cost about $46, which is only a few more dollars than a one-way Greyhound fare from Philadelphia to Rehoboth.
As for Rehoboth itself, this seems to be another summer like most of the ones before it: more commercialization, more expensive restaurants with food that doesn’t measure up to the costs, and more uncomfortable rocks in the sand where the ocean hits the beach.
But two great old food haunts close to my heart, Lingo’s Market and Café Papillon, are still there, as is Grotto Pizza – which has always been my personal favorite, not just in Rehoboth but anywhere. Dolle’s and Thrashers are still feeding the masses - of humans and sea gulls - with salt-water taffy, caramel corn and French fries. Funland still has the Haunted House, the Paratrooper and the horse racing, even if they’re showing their age just a little bit (and even if the horse racing is way overpriced at $1 a game).
Most importantly, though, the ocean waves keep crashing ashore, just as they have for the last 23 years I’ve been watching them. At least that hasn’t changed.
The DART Route 305 timetable is available at http://www.dartfirststate.com/305/
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