We had breakfast on our balcony: boiled eggs, rye toast with all natural peanut butter, and grapes (still trying to keep it healthy!) Of course my husband had to have liverwurst as well...when in Rome, I guess...
We went for an hour walk on the beach. We noticed that the beaches to the right of ours were nice like ours, but the beaches to the left, not so much. The water to the left of our beach had a lot of seaweed/seagrass floating in it, and of course much of it had washed up on shore as well so they just weren't as pretty beaches. Made us feel lucky we were able to stay where we did :)
During part of our walk we were approached by a local trying to get us to jet-ski. "Oh, normally it's $70 per couple for 30 minutes but for you, I do 35 minutes". Thanks a lot buddy! Since we had both jet-skiid before, we decided we would save the cash to have other experiences while on the island.
We passed a photo shoot happening in a cabana on the beach: some girl was in a white bathing suit (barely bathing suit!) contorting herself into sexy poses while a group of people stood around her, positioning her hair, her limbs, etc, while the photographer snapped away. My husband decided it wasn't a very good photo shoot because they didn't have any lighting, they were only using natural light in the photos.
After our walk we went for a swim, first real swim in the Caribbean Sea! I am not a huge ocean person, while my husband grew up on the Black Sea so he is very comfortable and familiar (I was until I was knocked down and dragged out by a wave and a current a few years ago). While in the water, thousands of fish started to swim by us, schools and schools of fish with huge eyes! It was crazy!
After our swim we laid under a "chickie" as I have heard them referred to, little huts made of dried palm fronds, and we read. Talk about relaxation! I love getting into a good book and have so little time to read for pleasure at home.
With it being Sunday, almost everything on the island was closed. My husband decided we should get tequila and make margaritas so we drove around looking for an open store. By the time we found one, we were also hungry and we stumbled upon Lee' Restaurant, basically a little shack with a couple grills on the side of the building. The restaurant was on a side street inland on the island. It looked like where the locals would eat and we were all for trying something different and off the beaten path. We tried to order from the menu which was part Spanish part Chinese, and the man taking our order spoke no English. I think he finally understood that my husband asked for grilled chicken. We went outside to watch the food prepared. Huge chicken quarters were taken from one grill where they were slow cooking and placed on the higher heat grill, then taken off and chopped up into a few places, then loaded on top of a huge bed of pork rice, and drizzled with a little BBQ sauce. The smell filling the car was intoxicating and we couldn't wait to get back to our room to eat!
The food was just as good as it smelled, and it fed us for 3 meals! It was inexpensive and delicious, and we were full and happy.
We headed out for dinner, downtown by the Renaissance Mall. While we planned to eat at Iguana Joe's, it was closed and we ended up at The Paddock instead. We had declined going to this place literally 2 or 3 times, first based on the outward appearance (it's decorated like a cow and has a dinosaur on the roof...??), second based on the menu: ALL YOU CAN EAT CHEESEBURGERS, really!? I'm in Aruba and need to fit into a bathing suit....ew.
But, alas, nothing else appeared to be open so we got a table...We waited over an hour for our food. Our waiter was EXTREMELY curt and rude. My mixed grill of fish, which silly me, I expected to be GRILLED since I asked the waiter and he said it was, was clearly dumped in the deep fryer as it was glistening with oil when it was brought to me. The shrimp: overcooked and rubbery. Salmon? The same. Mahi-Mahi? Inedible!! Almost impossible to bite into. The grouper? Edible, if you didn't mind your arteries clogging as you ate. The broccoli was decent, although it was clearly frozen and poorly prepared. Only good thing about the meal? Being able to use someone's internet connection to Skype my parents and let them know we were on the island and safe.
Since we were still hungry when we left, we decided it was ok to get some ice cream so we went to a Baskin Robbins on the second floor of a jewelry store. I had pinapple-coconut no sugar added, and figured that made up for the Pink Iguana (Strawberry Pina Colada) I had planned to have at Iguana Joe's.
When we got back to Casa del Mar, we decided to go to the Alhambra casino behind our hotel to check it out. My husband talked me into penny slots even though I really really didn't feel like gambling. I put a dollar into the machine and promptly won almost $25. I proceeded to do the only smart thing: cash out. (And then pay it back and more the rest of the week once the gambling addiction set in...)
Around 11 pm we headed out to the beach with some wine. We were hanging out, watching a lightning storm in the distance when I heard my husband say "oh, look, a dog". I do NOT like dogs I don't know. I have had bad experiences of being bitten by one extremely large, extremely mean dog, and when strange dogs approach me I have a tendency to FREAK OUT inside. So I turn over on my lounge chair, and there about 10 feet away, is a big dog with a shepherd face and a golden lab body. I literally roll back over toward my husband and freeze. Through my teeth I am able to say "Is it gone? Is it coming this way? What the **** is going on!?" And he happily says "Look, they're coming over here!" "THEY!?!?" "Yes, there's 2 of them..." He tells me, and I close my eyes and wait for them to bite me. But they don't. They just trot right on by our lounge chairs and head up the stairs on the beach into Matthew's beachside. They are in there for a few minutes before they are finally shooed out by the waitstaff who is cleaning up for the night. They head onward down the beach. Phew! That was my cue: we headed back to our room for bed.
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