Aruba Grand 2 nights & La Cabana 7 nights

August 14 - 23, 2003 by Andrea, Paul and Kevin

Howdy all

We spent our 10 days in Aruba Aug 14- 23 and it was delightful. Since we have been to the island many times over the last 24 yrs, we did not do any real touring. This was a true r and r vacation.

That being said, our son Kevin, did take the PADI Advanced Open water course w/ Unique and had 6 wonderful dives including a drift, night, navigation, photography and other dives. His favorite dive though was with Pelican sports and a night dive to the Antilla. Kevin said that he saw enough green and spotted morays to last him a lifetime :-)

Getting back to our resorts. We stayed 2 nights at the Aruba Grand on the 7th floor in a large hotel room. We had a great view of the ocean and the pool. Aruba Grand was quiet and very tranquil. The staff was accomodating and the facilities were lovely. Their casino was extremely dead and I played on their roulette machine with $20 for 2 hours. Out of boredom, I finally went to bed and cashed in my $20.
I would stay there again! My husband and I highly recommend the Grand, especially if one likes tranquility.

We moved into our timeshare at Lacabana on the 16th and felt quite settled. Every day we'd park ourselves at the pool for the day. Often we'd cross to the beach, take a walk ,then a dip and then position ourselves back in our chaises at the front pool.

Started with sublock 15 for the first 4 days and finished up using 8. None us peeled which is a first for this Irish freckled family.

We rented a car from Tropic and as usual, Hans met us at the airport with keys in hand. It was a Toyota or something like that....all I knew is that it was fine and inexpensive.
La Cabana Beach Resort We met friends for dinner or gambling every evening and had quite a good time. Would have been much better if we all came away big winners, but that was not in the cards for us this trip.

We had dinner at Tony Romas (our son's favorite), French Steakhouse= excellent and I even had the chicken parmesan, Alfredos= delicious and their lasagna was terrific, Madam Janette= filet mignon YUM, Captain's Table @ LaCabana = was absolutely awful...the filet mignon was tough and the shrimp was frozen, the appetizers were not great either. 2 thumbs down for Captains Table. King Ribs take out was great and 2 dinners fed the 3 of us for Wednesday night dinner and Thursday lunch. We ate at the Promenade on Thursday AND Friday evening. Friday evening at Promenade is all you can eat appetizers for about $30pp. (including wine, coffee and dessert) I had 2 orders of snails ,a seafood casserole in a puff pastry and a shrimp cocktail..............husband and son ate the same as I but they also had a couple of other things too. It was a true smorgasbord and was wonderful.

Ayo

Andrea, Paul and Kevin