3rd trip to Aruba and traveled with our 3 year old daughter, her first trip to Aruba.
We left on Sat May 10th from Chicago. We had a direct flight with United at 8:25 a.m., left on time and arrived at about 2:15 p.m., picked up our luggage and grabbed a taxi $17. to the resort. Checked in within minutes and headed for our room. Front desk staff very nice and pleasant.
We were on the ground floor 136A near the pool and barbaque area. We changed and headed for the store Hong King we took the bus for $2.30 pp roundtrip. We spent about $95. for breakfast/lunch stuff for the week.
We got back and our daughter wanted to get in the pool so that's what we did.
Sunday - Mother's day - So happy to be on the Island this was the best present for me! just being there made my day. We went to the beach for the day and then back for a nap. Went to Bennihanna's for dinner. $70. The cook at our table was really fun even let the kids assist in cooking. We walked around and enjoyed the evening and beautiful weather.
Monday - We took our daughter to the pool and she was hanging around the stairs of the pool she wasn't getting in much deeper. Enjoyed happy hour and Bonnie the bartender was great! She was so cheerful everyday . We played bingo and had fun - didn't win but it was still fun. Back to the room for another nap. We had dinner at Sole Mare $110. great food as usual and drinks too. Walked back to the main road and walked around for a bit - hubby went to the Excelsior (sp) but no luck didn't win anything. We hung around the Holiday Inn pool area, they really have a nice pool. Would love to hang out there for the day. Took the bus back to the resort and got ready for bed and I believe we had some honeymooners next to us! They were pretty loud and our daughter wanted to know what all the loud noise was and why was someone screaming
boy I had to think fast to explain something to her
.
Tuesday - Back to the beach and our daughter really enjoyed making sand castles and so did we! It's so nice to be able to relax and not be on a schedule so I was really enjoying this day. Happy hour time so we headed over for drinks and of course our little one had to have her frozen kiddie drink too. Back to our room for a nap - our daily nap is needed to keep our little one from being cranky during the evening. We headed for downtown and had dinner at Iguana Joe's, $55 food was good but our service was poor. Walked around for a bit - walked over the pier and hubby tried the Casino no luck again. Headed over to the bus station and back to the resort.
Wednesday - Headed over to Dunkin Donuts and found out who are honeymooners were . We ended up taking a tour of the Aruban Resort and Casino our appt. was for 11:30 a. m , we were done by 2:00 p.m.. We ate lunch at the Key Largo with our rep. Food was just ok. Sales presentation was ok until big boy
came in. I posted something about that tour already. We headed back to our room to change and then off to the pool we went. Our daughter finally got in the pool all the way in
she realized she could stand and the water was right to her neck so she was cool with that. We went in for nap time and decided to eat in for dinner so we ordered from Captain's Table.Can't remember how much we spent on this dinner.
Thursday - We took the 8:20 a.m. DePalm bus to DePalm Island. We ate breakfast (pretty good) and headed over to see the fish, boy they are so pretty. We snorkeled for a bit and then took our daughter over to the waterpark. We had some snacks / drinks and did some more snorkeling I still can't believe how pretty the fish are
. Had some lunch from the buffett, it was ok. We took the 3pm bus back to the resort and took our daily nap. Off to Tony Roma's for dinner. We had a gc for $50 and payed $30. Off to the resort and so ready for bed, until we heard our neighbors again
Friday - Back to the beach and had fun - nap - dinner at Cuba's Cooking. $56. we had coupons for 2 free drinks
I love that place for some reason.
Sat - Checked out at noon and had lunch at the Islander Grill. Took a
a taxi to the airport $20. Our flight was with USAirways not a direct flight this time - We flew to Charlotte in 3hrs
it was suppose to be 4 hrs. Had lunch at Chilis and then headed to the gate for our flight to Chicago - the flight was 1:40 minutes. The weather was cold and raining
Hope to make another trip next year!
Oh we didn't bring our carseat and our daughter did fine on the plane. We used the bus most of the time on our trip. Lots of sunscreen for the little ones.