We spent two days in Ocean City, Maryland, for Labor Day weekend.

Like many Americans, especially Marylanders, when Labor Day comes around my family always tries to pitch in our money and go somewhere. In the year prior to this we went to the western part of Maryland, in the mountains, and rented a cabin in the area called Deep Creek. I’ve been there before, and it’s relaxing, but there’s not much to do.

So when my sisters were plotting out where to go this year, they landed on Ocean City, Maryland. We were going to spend Labor Day Weekend in 2025 at Ocean City, which would be the first time in many years that I would go back to this area.

However, the AirBnB we got (which I didn’t end up liking at all—it was so expensive yet extremely janky. Stuff was literally falling off of the walls without being touched) didn’t allow us to check in until 4:00 PM that Saturday, so we decided we needed to do something before going to the ocean.

First we decided to stop in Preston, as my grandparents are both buried there. Once upon a time, my maternal grandfather was a pastor in the town of Preston, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, and both of them were buried near the town because he was a Korean War veteran as well. Both of their funerals were here in the town as well.

We knew we were going to do that, but the question mark was what else we could do to fill the time. I had originally pitched that we go to a park in Delaware to see some cypress trees, but that didn’t seem to land as well because it was a bit out of the way. That’s how we then landed on Berlin, which is twenty minutes outside of Ocean City.

Once we wrapped up procrastinating in Berlin, we headed to Ocean City, which marked the official beginning to our weekend there. Here’s what we did while we were in town!

Day 1: Berlin, Beach Sunsets, Dough Roller, Relaxation Time

This Labor Day, we think most people headed down to the ocean the Friday night, as we literally did not hit any traffic the entire time we were driving to Ocean City. We hit a nightmare amount of traffic coming home from the ocean, but more on that later, as we’re only on Day One right now.

Anyways, our AirBnB, as I mentioned before, only let us check in until 4 PM, so we took our time getting to Ocean City. First we stopped for lunch at a vaguely depressing mall in Salisbury. I got a chicken teriyaki bowl from the local Japanese style place, but it wasn’t as good as Sarku, which I believe is a Baltimore County specific teriyaki place.

After Salisbury we drove forty more minutes to Berlin, Maryland, which was our official stop for the day. I’ll be putting out a blog post on this area, so keep an eye out for it if you want to see the detailed recollection of what we went to in Berlin, but basically this town has been named one of the best small towns in the United States.

We spent about three hours going in and out of shops in Berlin before heading to the nearest Walmart for groceries. Once you get into Ocean City groceries can be a little annoying to get, so we try to get them every time we head into the area. We were planning on a spaghetti night with both families, so we figured Walmart would be one of the more affordable options to feed ten people.

After that we headed into Ocean City, and once we arrived at our AirBnB and got settled, we headed down to the beach. I brought one of several books from this trip and enjoyed the ocean breeze, but it was a bit chilly. Usually Labor Day in Maryland can still be warm, and I thought it would be colder by the ocean, but in general it was a bit too cold for me during this trip.

At 6 PM we headed back to the AirBnB, which was in walking distance of the ocean, then headed to the Dough Roller on the main drag of the town. I was shocked at how much the Dough Roller cost now, as it was up to $40 per large pizza for a meat special. We spent $200 on four pizzas! I did not think it was worth the money.

We then called it in for the night after sitting around the living room and chatting.

Days 2+3: Beaches, Reading and Sunbathing, and the Ocean City Boardwalk

Day 2 of Ocean City turned out to be quite interesting, as I woke up very congested and vaguely delirious. In hindsight I was clearly sick, but I ate the breakfast my sister and her husband made then plopped back down into my bed. We then all got ready to go to the ocean, which isn’t really a highlight of Ocean City for me unless you’re looking at it.

I think Ocean City is great to relax and have fun with people you love, not for the ocean. That water, especially this Labor Day, was very cold. No one was getting in it and most people were just sitting around, playing in the sand, and having a great time just rotting in the sun.

I was down there for about two hours reading and having a nap, as the illness started catching up to me about forty pages into my second book. I then went back to the house and ended up sleeping, making sandwiches for everyone else, and spent some time catching up on my emails once I ran out of other things to do.

After lunch, the rest of my family decided to go to the pool, and I found various spots in the house to enjoy the sun with my book. I did end up taking another nap while I was there, and debated going to see a movie down the street despite the limited options. When everyone came back, we prepared a spaghetti dinner.

The evening we spent on the boardwalk, which is the nicest part of Ocean City to me. However, it was stuffed full of people to the point where it was uncomfortable. I’m used to coming on different weekends and being able to breathe, and we noticed straight away that they jack the prices up of everything for the summer crowd.

Thrasher’s fries, for example, usually cost $8 for the large bucket. During the summer they were $16. We still got two buckets anyways, but these kinds of markups made it a little harder to enjoy certain things, especially when you notice even Candy Kitchen was doing the same thing. My sister bought taffy on the boardwalk and it was cheaper at the standalone spots on the main strip.

It was really nice to catch the sunset, and we walked as far as the kite store. I started feeling really sick in there because of the fries and my illness, then we all collectively decided to escape the chaos of the boardwalk. I hadn’t been back in many years, but I was kind of sad to see how many chains were invading what used to be local businesses.

We called it in for the night after this. My sister and her boyfriend ended up going golfing and she won another free round, but I was already passed out. The next morning, we headed out at 9:30 AM, which turned out to be a mistake because it took five hours to get home because the Bay Bridge was so backed up.

All in all though, I think we decided we wouldn’t go back to Ocean City during Labor Day. The beach was nice, but everything else was expensive, crowded, and a little too congested compared to Deep Creek, where we had gone the year prior.

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