This is our third visit to the “Happy Island” of Aruba and this island paradise just keeps getting better. The island has recently emerged as a major tourist destination while preserving its rich and colourful history. To understand the complexity of the island, you just have to take a look at its flag. The red star represents the ancient industry of Brazilwood which was brought back to Europe by the first explorers. The yellow strips represent the island’s economic history in gold mining and the white outlining the star symbolizes both the white sand beaches and the purity of the Aruban people. The overall blue background of the flag represents the ocean and sky surrounding the island. The star itself has four points, said to invite visitors from all four corners of the world. Aruba is one of the Caribbean theme parks with its abundance of beaches, scuba diving sites and incredible vistas.
This time around we decided to explore the town of Oranjestad itself as we have always just headed out of the city. We strolled the main street and the many mall areas as well as popped into a local starbucks for a frap cool off and some wifi. I had eyed a barber shop along our route and decided to get a local haircut while Jan and Marianne headed for some more shopping before heading back to the ship. My experience was interesting as very limited english was spoken in my selected barber shop. One person did speak a bit so I was able to tell them that it was over two months since my last cut and then my guy from the Dominican Republic went to town on me. At the end of the experience, two thumbs up, a good trim and then a straight edge shave with all the lotions and splashes of whatever that goes with that - my first straight edge shave by the way, pretty nice. All in a great experience by some friendly locals playing some loud and awesome music.
Pics include the last time we see the “Welcome Home” sign on this ship as well as the final time we cast our lines from our last port on this amazing journey around the entire South American Continent, what an amazing adventure we have had.
Tonight we had Sara Coles, luggage expert, Julie Berndsen, Human Resource Manager, Henk and Lucia, from Cruise Specialists join our table, so lots of fun - especially when Sara ordered four deserts, yes really - did I say we had lots of fun. A tribute show to John Denver was our entertainment in the show lounge tonight. So all in all another great day. A few pic from today, hope you enjoy… Note: the tram running around downtown is kind of a hop on hop off and is free and fun to do, just happed to come by when I left the barbers, so I just hopped on.
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