However, my excitement faded slightly when our limo driver was the worst driver ever! When we were on the highway and there was a bend in the road, instead of staying in his lane the driver would merge into the next lane, no signal or anything, and I can't tell you how many times he was beeped at by other drivers!
I was nervous as we drove into NYC, since the terror threat was elevated for 9-11 weekend and there were vehicle checkpoints set up. I thought it would take extra long to get to the airport but it didn't; an hour and 45 minutes later we were arriving, paying the driver, and dropping off our bag with JetBlue. We went right through security with no problems and went to breakfast while we waited to board the plane.
On the plane we had 36 channels of DirectTV but they cut out as soon as we were over international waters. However, we did get movie channels so I was able to watch Bridesmaids on the way down (funniest movie ever!) and part of Something Borrowed.
We arrived at the airport in Aruba in about 4.5 hours, not a bad flight at all, went through customs and then waited to meet with Hans who was renting us a car for the week. He arrived about 20 minutes later and then we were on the road attempting to find our hotel, Casa del Mar. It took us awhile and we ended up in the high rise area, while our hotel was in the low rise area, but we got to see a lot of the island! ;)
We were able to check in right away even though we arrived earlier than check-in time. We found our room, changed for the beach and headed out. We had lunch at Tortuga, a beachside restaurant at the resort next door. Our first beer on the island (Balashi, of course, as it's brewed in Aruba) was delicious although they serve it in small cups and glasses because if you don't drink it fast it's warm in minutes! I had a grouper salad that was delicious. We met a couple people, one of them a Giants fan like myself. Finally we went and layed out, I applied sunblock twice for fear of burning to a crisp and ruining my whole vacation.
After the beach we had the luxury of taking a nap, showering, and then heading out in our rental car to do some grocery shopping and then find somewhere to eat. Since we were in a timeshare, we had all the amenities: master bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and dining area, and a sweet balcony off the back of the room.
When we headed to the grocery store is when we found out our car battery had died because Hans had turned on the lights and my husband didn't realize so he didn't turn them off (it was daytime! lol). We found a security guard who borrowed his friends car and helped us jump ours, although he connected the wires backwards and sparks were flying when my husband went to connect the ends to our rental car! Yikes!
Finally we got to the grocery store, and you could tell everyone had just arrived on the island because the store was mobbed! We got the necessities for the week and left as fast as possible. We unpacked groceries in our room and then headed down to our resort's restaurant, Matthew's Beachside. There were tiki torches and the restaurant was open on the water side so what little breeze there was (apparently bad weather in Venezuela was sucking out all the breeze from Aruba) was blowing in. I had a delicious glass of Carmenere red wine with my meal, which I had never had before but I am officially in love!
When we were done eating happy hour had begun (happy hour every day from 12-1, 4-6, and 9-10 with 2 for one drinks) so we each got 2 drinks and headed out to sit on the beach. Talk about peaceful and relaxing, watching the waves, sipping some vino beachside, seeing the stars...Aruba is certainly romantic! We took a bunch of pictures.
Finally we headed back to our room. On the way we saw a skinny black island cat who looks like a smaller version of our cat Ninja at home. I aptly named him Twinja and we continued to see him throughout our vacation.
We finally crashed into bed at 11:30 and that was probably the best night of sleep we had all week!
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