First Stop: Aruba

Vacation: finally here. This year we are taking a series of small trips again, including a couple of long weekends. The first leg of our vacation took us to Aruba. We arrived on Thursday and left Monday afternoon. I can't even believe how amazing our weekend was!! To begin, the more we travel the more we realize how the local people can really make it or break it for us. Going to Bermuda last year, we had a real distaste in our mouth after several experiences where people seem to see you as an inconvenience or worse. (when in reality they wouldn't have the economy they do without tourists) Even just a friendly "So how are you doing today?" in the bus would seem like you were bothering them. Forget about asking for directions or advice. So coming to Aruba was so refreshing, a total 180.
Stepping out of the airport, we are immediately hit by two things: the humidity and the beauty of the ocean. Those two things never changed over the course of our time there. The beaches (especially Eagle Beach which was right across the street from our hotel) were amazing, the best in the world in my humble opinion. We would wake up every morning and go for a nice long walk, jog and then swim to cool off.

Pictures don't even do it justice, and I know that phrase is over-used oftentimes, but in this case it's truer than ever.


The heavy Dutch influence was pretty apparent in a lot of their architecture.

The lizards were all over the place! Most likely their national animal. They varied in all kinds of sizes and colors.

This green kind was the most common one. We saw several run over on the road. =(


Ok, so don't think less of us now that you read this, but we just had to try the Ostrich egg omelet. This is Teddy with his egg ready to dive in:

This is Teddy a few bites in:

Ok and for the record, I only had two bites!! It wasn't that gross, but it wasn't great either. Once in a lifetime experience, really, no need to try it twice.
This old fort was pretty neat, right behind it (you can kinda see a car in the foreground) I locked the keys to our rental car inside. Ugh.
Even though everything is shut down on Sundays, our rental company sent a guy out to unlock it for us with their spare. And didn't charge a dime! Time and time again we were impressed with the kindness and yes, even generosity of the people there.
While there we happened to have a conversation with a local about the whole Natalee Holloway deal. It's really sad how one or two people can really ruin a country's reputation, it seems the locals have paid dearly for the actions of a couple crazy people.
One night we had this crazy loud thunder and lighting storm! I really miss those, living in California you're lucky to get a few days of rain here and there.

The thunder was so loud, cars' alarm systems would sound every time it went off because of the ground shaking. Pretty amazing.
Here is the beach at night. Calm, peaceful, and ooooh I just want to go back!

This restaurant by the beach was delightful. It was 100% outdoors, right on the white-sand beach with an amazing view.

One of these days we'll have to go back. So far, of all the beaches we've been to (sorry Hawaii, Maui, Bermuda, Mazatlan, California, Florida, etc.) this one takes the prize.

Up next: St. Lucia