How I’ve missed you. Well, that’s not entirely true. Since actually, you’ve been here all along, and I’ve just been too busy doing fabulous things to stop and write. Normally I would be totally kidding about the fabulous part, but it’s true*. Mainly because we went to ARUBA! Without the kids! For free**! It’s fun to say ARUUUUBA really loud. Kind of reminds me of the sound of those old-fashioned car horns, or the noise Neil makes when he blows his nose. Anyway, without further ado, Aruba:
I know what you’re thinking: “Aruba….isn’t that the place where that girl disappeared?? Natalie something-or-other?” Yeah, that pretty much covered the extent of our knowledge of Aruba before we left as well. Also, the Beach Boys apparently dig Aruba, but would prefer to take you to Kokomo.
I envisioned Aruba somewhere around all those teeny islands in the Carribean – maybe around St. Lucia, or in the Bahamas. (sidenote – is Google Maps just playing dumb, or are all the islands in the Bahamas actually called “The Bahamas”? That can’t be right.)
Aruba is actually nowhere close to either of those – it’s waaaaay down there by South America – about 15 miles north of Venezuala! I had NO idea. None. Until I looked at the map, obviously. Google Maps did have the courtesy to name Aruba, but Curacao and Bonaire got shafted. All three islands are part of what I’ve always heard referred to as the “Dutch Antilles”, but apparently I’m way behind the times because obviously everyone knows they are now called the “Netherlands Antilles”. “Dutch” isn’t PC I guess.
It was a looong plane ride (first to Houston, then 4.5 hours to Aruba), but we did get to see the movie 27 Dresses (women cheered while the men collectively groaned). Continental needs to go back to the drawing board with their steamed-burger-in-a-bag “dinner” though. Blech. Getting through customs when we landed was uneventful, and we hailed paid a random guy a dollar to hail us a cab.
The cabs in Aruba are very fancy – Lexus and Mercedes and Toyota SUVs mostly. They are just regular (luxury) vehicles – no yellow paint or stripper signs hanging off the trunk, and no meters. Apparently, if you want to be a cabbie in Aruba, you just affix this little plastic “Taxi” sign on the roof and you’re good to go. This makes for some interesting negotiating when you’re going anywhere. I’m fairly convinced that most people in Aruba just buy a really nice car, get a Taxi sign, and pick up fares until they can make their car payment.
When we got to our hotel, we were pretty much floored. The hotel lobby was all open air, and this is what you see when you walk up the stairs into the entry:
Beautiful! I know it’s hard to see in this picture, but the water was an incredible shade of turquoise, and everything at the hotel was amazingly lush (even more remarkable since Aruba is quite literally a desert island). Here’s another view of the lobby, taken at sunset:
This picture doesn’t really do it justice since Neil was shooing me along, but I loved the light fixtures and the orchids in those white vases. It was all very feng shui.
And when we got up to our hotel room, this was the view we had from our balcony:
Seriously – the water really is that blue. Bluer actually. I’m not sure if you can tell or not in this picture, but the wind is blowing like crazy towards the water. The weirdest thing about the ocean here is that there are no waves. People were skiing and tubing right off the beach! The trade winds all hit the rocky north side of the island, and all of the hotels are on the south side. It made for some very relaxing floating, and lots of entertainment watching Neil and his coworkers getting flung around on tubes.
More pictures and stories coming tomorrow – I promise!
*ok, so there was one week of fabulousness, but who’s counting?
**gambling and pre-vacation shopping expenses excluded
