Published via Ecency

Day 4 of our cruise was a lot of fun! We had breakfast and then got off the ship and headed into town. Today's stop was Aruba. We decided to check things out on foot around town, so we just stayed close to the port.

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The area where you get off has a really nice shopping mall. Everything was painted bright colors and looked very Dutch. It was really surprising to us that one of the main languages of Aruba is Spanish. English was also widely spoken.

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We went to the shopping mall first and walked around. I pretended like I was going into Prada, but my husband really liked the architecture of the place. There was greenery, rocks, and water features at the mall.

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Behind the mall there was an open area with a swing and a few sculptures. It was really warm, so we sat on the swing for a few minutes and then we were ready to move on!

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We found some wifi and contacted home. We hadn't talked to them since we were in Cartagena, so they were happy to hear that all was okay! We found a trolley and hopped on. As we were riding around, we noticed a museum and decided to check it out on the way back. It was the history of Aruba museum.

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After going around the musuem, we walked over to a beach that wasn't far away. I was looking for something to take the kids as a souvenir, but with six kids, I didn't want it to cost much. I remembered how much the kids love bottle caps, so I made it my goal to find them in each place we stopped. At the beach, they were all over, so I got a handful of the ones that said Aruba on them.

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Next we headed back to the ship to have some lunch around 2:00. I'm sure we spent a little time in the sauna as well, but I can't remember exactly what we did back on the ship!

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Tonight's attire was tropical. I had taken my daughter shopping a few weeks before the cruise when I knew what the attire was each night. We didn't tell anyone we were going on a cruise (or that Nana and Pop were coming to watch the kids). It was a big surprise. So I found this dress and asked her if it was "tropical" looking and she agreed it was without even knowing why I needed a tropical dress.

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Each evening we decided to do a little photo shoot in our nice clothes while we waited for the restaurant to be open. Needless to say, it was quite windy in Aruba! I have on shorts under my dress!

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On this evening, we had a reservation to eat at 7:30 in the restaurant, but we decided to go early and see if they would take us. They opened at 6:15, so that's when we went. They seated us in a new spot with other Americans around us. It ended up being our table the rest of the cruise.

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Dinner was A Taste of the Caribbean! We had the pesto Tagliatelle and it was ok. The desserts, as usual, were really tasty and we had second dinner and dessert at the buffet after.