Aruba 2021
Day 12: Saturday, August 7
Dutch balls and old friends kinda day...
We were up by 6:30am AGAIN! The hubs was out of coffee this morning. Oh my! He really tried going my route with pop and he finally gave up and started googling "coffee shops near me". All I seen was a streak of smoke go by and I assumed that was him heading out the door.
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The closest place ended up actually being the Ritz Carlton down the road. Coffee was $5.50 and he was now juiced up. When he returned I decided to head to the Ting Wei by us for necessities: bread, cheese, COFFEE, creamer, eggs and then I scored a 3 pack of fly swatters!!!!! It's almost too late, but hey, we still had a few days and we would each be the proud owners of our own fly swatter!
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Coming down our street, I guess I had missed the morning visit from the goat family but found them walking down the street instead.
We were sitting out by the pool and along came the pigeons to take a drink of the freshly cleaned pool that our pool boy had just left us.
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But wait, it was another 1 legged pigeon. Aruba is just loaded with them.
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The not-so-munchkin woke up without any smells in the house...she seemed a little disappointed.
I guess it was time to start breakfast and I decided we would continue the burrito theme and on today's menu was breakfast burritos.
Mid week, as we were sitting down for a meal at the dining room table, I noticed the "fake" flowers on the table. I'm one to admit, I am NOT good with indoor flowers. I have tried for over 20 years to have indoor flowers and each experience has ended in disappointment and dead flowers. I took one look at the fake flowers on the table and shouted "Would you look at that!! I even kill fake flowers! They are turning brown!" The family laughed...they knew I was right. I tried to get a picture and didn't realize it ended up blurry, but you get the picture.
After breakfast we decided to do a little swimming. It was hot and we had time to kill while waiting on our Aruban friend who was sleeping in after working all week. Then Kendra called and we ended up on the phone for 1 1/2 hours. Man, I wonder why we cut our conversation so short that day??? (No, seriously...we will talk on the phone for 3-4 hours at a time).
We decided to shower and get ready for the day. We hadn't been downtown and decided we'd see if anything was open for shopping while we still waited on a text from our friend.
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We ended up parking in the same place we did when we went on the submarine and walked over to the mall.
There weren't a whole lot of stores open and you could see that a lot had permanently closed. But there were a lot of souvenir and clothing shops open. I was on a hunt for a refrigerator magnet to represent our dive experience (which is VERY hard to find but I found my first one here on a cruise once).
The hubby always has to stop in any skate store he comes across (we used to own one for 9 years) and I liked that it had my kinda skates.
The trolley/tram wasn't running now. I guess it only runs when a ship is in port. Darnit. We had fun riding it last time. There really wasn't many people around. We'd run into someone every once in awhile. I honestly don't know how any of these businesses stay afloat.
Lots of walking was involved and all we managed to find was a pirate ship magnet saying Aruba on it and the hubby found a shirt.
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But I did manage to score some ice cold pop! Where's my cooking pan at when I need it? It was so hot out and that meant I had to chug this one. I remember those days...
This vacation come a few weeks before it was time for Sakari to head back to school. We have not done any school shopping yet but we knew she would have a list of items to buy. I'm pretty sure she needs this bookbag to haul it all around.
As we headed back we tried to find a place that had some type of internet service to see if we could reach our friend. I guess I hadn't thought of how we were going to contact her when we left the house for the mall. Oops.
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However, we did find a spot with internet and after we contacted her, we ask if she'd like to meet for lunch and she made suggestions.
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We decided to meet at The Plaza for lunch. Now we just had to walk and find it. My leg was killing me by now but I was determined to make it.
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We finally made it and waited for our friend to come then we headed to this little dutch place.
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Now I'm not sure if I had ever had Dutch food but I was up for trying it and she told me to get the Bitterballen. They were balls with gooey stuff inside and you dip them in mustard. Ok cool. They were good. Different, but good. I liked the taste but the texture was weird inside.
Sakari played it safe with wings
The hubby played it safe also and got the Plaza Burger. I ended up getting something called the Shoarma. Our friend told me about this awesome peanut sauce so I ordered some of that and ohhh emmm geee it was mouthwatering goodness!
We sat around catching up since it had been 3 years since we seen each other. We talked about the cruise ships returning and how Aruba survived during the pandemic. I also brought up the 1 legged birds in Aruba and she let me know that they usually get tangled in fishing wire and that's how they lose their legs. When we were done eating, and I hate to even post this, but I was a little disappointed that we weren't going to hang out more. Sakari was supposed to get this baby turtle last time we were here, but it was just too much work to jump the hoops to bring it back to the states in such a short amount of time. She has kept up with the turtle she named Leah and our friend would send her pictures of her growing up. Sakari couldn't wait to see her all grown up and there were even more babies. She did mention that she had given Leah away to someone recently but still had her babies in the yard. But once lunch ended, so did our visit for some reason. I was left wondering what happened. I was sad. I didn't know what to think. Last time we spent the entire day together exploring and going over to her house and went out for drinks. But not this time. But it is what it is. I just don't know at this point. :(
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She offered to drop us off at our car, since it was so far away, and we took our one and only picture with her before getting into our car and heading home.
Prices for our food were as follows: Pop $2 Beer $6.25 Virgin Pina Coloada for Sakari $7.50 (that girls gotta start drinking beer...it's cheaper). Shoarma $14 Peanut sauce $1 Plaza Burger $12.50 6 wings $9 Bitterbatten $6 Our grand total was $80.25 for all 4 of us.
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On the way home, we stopped by the grocery store, Ling & Sons in Oranjestad, for pop.
I discovered they had Diet Pepsi and I was like a kid in the candy store that had just found my favorite candy that no other stores carried! Woo Hoo. We purchased 6 cases of pop and 3 individual cold cans for now. This would cost us a whooping $64.46!!! But I'm pretty sure we are stocked for the rest of the vacation now. lol
We decided to head to a beach to watch the sunset and get more pictures.
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We end up at the beach by the cruise port.
When it was time to go, I managed to drive off with my can of pop on top of the car, which almost hit the car behind me and splattered all over the road. Go me! Now the good part is this all happened in front of a police officer. Then to top it off I got into the wrong lane at the round about and managed to switch 2 lanes over, cut some cars off, and I was sure I was about to get pulled over. The Aruban Gods were looking over me. I didn't get pulled over.
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After that stressful moment, we arrived at home and I honestly don't remember anything after that. I'm sure we hung out at the pool then went to bed early.
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Sakari went to her sauna room (I seriously don't know how she stood it...turn on the darn a/c girl) and did a drawing and who knows when she went to sleep.
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