Just after the Emerald Princess docked this morning in Oranjestad, Aruba, the Caribbean Princess pulled in right behind us. This was particularly exciting for us, as we'll be spending Saturday in Fort Lauderdale on the Caribbean Princess (more on that later). But these two ships in port meant that there would be nearly 6500 passengers descending on Aruba at 8:00am, so we ate a quick breakfast from the Cafe Caribe outside on the Terrace Deck and then packed my backpack and our cooler for a beach day. We walked out of the secured port area and crossed the Main Street in Oranjestad to the bus terminal, where we caught the #10 bus to Eagle Beach.
The bus was full of cruise ship passengers; pity those poor locals trying to get for work. We met up with Janet and Bob and Claudette and Ross who were following our advice to take the bus to the beach. We got off the bus at the Amsterdam Manor (now called the Tulip) and set up our stuff under a few of the remaining palapas providing shade. The Tulip provided chair rental for $10 each that included the use of their very clean bathrooms and outdoor showers across the street. We rented one chair and also set up our tarp,and I wasted no time getting in the water with a float.
It was not even 9:45am by that time. We had gotten an early start!
And there we stayed,floating and walking and even flying my kite, until 2:30pm, when we caught a bus (standing room only) back to the port area. We spent a few minutes in the shops there; G bought an Aruba hat, because the eleventy dozen he already has aren't enough, and we found a few minutes of wifi with high enough speed to check the webcams at home.
Back on the ship, we washed things out, showered, and were up in Skywalkers at 5:00pm for a most beautiful sailaway and sushi night.
The most traveled passenger party for this cruise was held at 7:30pm. With over 400 Captains Circle Elite passengers on board this cruise (for comparison purposes, there were 280 on our November 7 cruise), the cutoff for the party was 435 days on Princess cruises, and we squeaked in by the hair of our chinny-chin chins. We sat with a most delightful couple of about our age from Buenos Aires, Argentina whose English was a bit limited (but certainly more extensive than our Spanish) and we hit it off by sharing travel photos on our phones (it's not just me who keeps photo albums of our trips at ready access).
Three Breeza Marinas later, I am tucked in bed and will be asleep as soon as I finish this post.
Photo 1: activity on the bridge of the Caribbean Princess
Photo 2: the Emerald Princess on the left:; the Caribbean Princess on the right
Photos 3 and 4; Magens Bay on St. Thomas has NOTHING on this beach!
Photo 5: flying my kite in today's brisk wind