I just edited my earlier post because I totally forgot about one of our restaurants - man we ate good!
Also thoughs on Curacao - wow, what a completely different experience. Can't hold a candle to Aruba's beaches but found the culture there very interesting. We stayed at the Curacao Hilton and it had amazing pools with invisible edges looking right over the ocean. Unlike Aruba, Curacao is very hilly with a few small mountains so the landscape is much different. Most people staying at the Hilton and that we met in Curacao were Dutch. Dutch is spoken primarily but the wait staff and others also speak fluent English. Some of the tourists we met enjoyed speaking English to us.
Unlike my planning for Aruba (where I planned several activities a day) we didn't have much planned at all except for my boyfriend's scuba dive. When we got there we and drove around and saw things we immediately wished we had another day or two. Willemstad, the major city, is so cool with the brightly colored buildings. Unfortunately we didn't make it out to any of the museums that our guide book advised we a "must see" so I can't offer any insight on them. BUT seeing the floating bridge (it is a pedestrian bridge and has to move any time a boat comes through by floating to the side) was really neat and we went to a flea market and bought some pretty cool souveniers.
On our last day we had planned to take a boat trip that ended up getting cancelled but Guest Services convinced us to try a day trip to Klein Curacao, an uninhabited island about two hours by boat from the mainland. It was really amazing! I also called it Sun Burn Island because there's no shade only little huts set up but we got to explore the island and see some cool shipwrecks. We also enjoyed meeting some excellent snorkeling and fun with Dutch tourists.
Scuba diving in Curacao was apparently pretty great. Unfortunately the Hilton had told us my boyfriend was booked on a trip for our second day there (the only day he could scuba because we had to fly) and then was only able to offer him a one tank dive. Dissapointed we walked right next door to the Dive Shop at the Hyatt and they hooked him up with a dive. My guide book had informed me that the Hilton had "the best equipped dive shop" in Curacao but we found that not to be the case at all.
Another tip for anyone wanting to add a side journey - Do not fly on DAE!!! Without telling us, they cancelled our 9:30 a.m. flight back to Aruba and instead put us on the 7:30. We show up at 8 and there is no flight. Further than that, they at first, seemed to have no record of us in their system. It wasn't until we fished the confirmation email out of my carryon that they were able to tell us what had gone on (and this all involved trips back and forth from the baggage place where I was watching our stuff to the other building where the reservation desk is.) My poor boyfriend was sweating up a storm! They had no flight to Aruba until the next day and weren't even able to tell us which other airline did. We walked over the baggage desk of KLM airlines and they put us on a 12:30 flight which luckily took off 15 minutes early so we JUST made our connection in Aruba - yikes!.
And here's some great pics of Curacao and our boat trip to Klien Curacao:
http://picasaweb.google.com/rdunie/Curacao2008
And some of our Aruba pics as well:
http://picasaweb.google.com/rdunie/Aruba2008
Enjoy!