Dates of stay: 05/30/2009 to 05/06/2009
Great place to have fun! my travel advice:

1. If you drink, buy your alcohol at the duty free stores in the airport, if you wait to get to the island you will be paying $30 to $36 USD for a 750 ml bottle. DUTY FREE PLEASE!!

2. If you are traveling on a budget, go to the grocery store to get your food there, some restaurants will charge you up to $30 USD for a meal that is nothing out of the ordinary.

3. For the taste of local food, you will find EVERYTHING in the warm food section of the grocery store for about $8.00 per meal.

4. Do the party bus! it's fun.

5.If you are adventurous, rent a jeep and go on a tour of the Island, the rental place will provide you with a detailed map. you will be paying about $85 USD for the rental.

6. Go to baby beach, it's just gorgeous!!!.

7. Senor Frog is a nice place to go and have some drinks, they have live salsa bands every Friday.

We recentely stayed at the Occidential Resort in Aruba. EVERYTHING was EXCELLENT!!!! Sandra at the Conc. Desk was especially helpful and made the EX in excellent! We have traveled to several Caribbean locations and found this was the best. Sandra personalized our trip in so many ways. Please pass along to the Occidential Resort in Aruba the valuable employee they have in Sandra.

We ate at Cactus Jacks Restaurant in Aruba and found it to be very disappointing. We were a party of five and our bill was just under $ 100.00. That would be great if we had enjoyed our food and drink. Two of us started with a cocktail, the Hurricane and Heat wave. Both cocktails were not good. I have ordered Hurricanes at many places, but this one was a cloudy apple juice color and tasted less than desirable. We ordered the nachos to share. This was the best part of our dinner. The chips were great and the overall dish was very good! Two people ordered burgers, I ordered the Jack's special - 1/2 chicken and Ribs with baked potato, and one person ordered a salad with chicken. The burgers, chicken and ribs were dry. The bar-b-que sauce tasted good. The baked potato had a look that it had been baked on a previous day and reheated. Unfortunately, this was not a good meal. The location of Cactus Jacks is good. Make sure if it is windy that you sit closer to the building and not by the street (we sat there), it will make your dining experience a little better.
Location/Atmosphere - 3-4 stars
Service - 3-4 stars
Food - 1-2 stars
Price 2-3 stars
I would not recommend this as a place to eat.

Date: May 13th 2009 - May 20th 2009


SUMMARY:
We rented a car from Royal Car Rental. The vehicle's safety was never discussed. Our bags were stolen out of the back seat of our LOCKED vehicle, through the "zipper plastic" back window. NEVER rent a JEEP in Aruba. We realized these are the cars ALL tourists rent, and this makes you a TARGET! We firmly believe, had we rented a car that was less conspicuous and not a "tourist only" type rental car, we NEVER WOULD HAVE BEEN ROBBED! BE VERY CAREFUL IN BABY BEACH, THE POLICE TOLD US (AFTER THE FACT) THAT IT IS A ROBBERY HOT SPOT!


Review:
I'm writing this review as a cautionary tale of Aruba.

My boyfriend and I were vacationing in Aruba from May 13th 2009 - May 20th 2009, and stayed in a hotel on the Palm Beach strip of the J.E. Irausquin Blvd.

We had both been to the island several times before, but only for a day, because we were vacationing on a cruise. We had done the group tour before, and decided this time we would rent a car and drive around and explore ourselves.

Our hotel recommended Royal Car Rental, which rented us a forest green Jeep Wrangler for the Day at a rate of $105 (tax included). On May 18th 2009, the day we selected to rent the car, we arrived at the Hotel entrance to find 3 identical jeeps from Royal Car Rental parked out front. After signing all the required paperwork, we were taken over to our Jeep and given the keys. One of Royal Car Rental's employees began to unzip the plastic top of the rental, but we requested he leave it on.

We took off for the day. At around 12:00 p.m. we stopped off at the Seroe Colorado Lighthouse to take pictures, and then made our way to Baby Beach. Around 12:45 pm, we were taking pictures along Baby Beach for about 10-15 minutes with our car parked in plain view and within our sight. Upon returning to the car, we reached in the back to retrieve something from our bags and to our horror our bags were GONE!

We immediately dialed 911, which transferred us to the Oranjestad Police department. They wouldn’t connect us to the San Nicolas Police Department and insisted we call them ourselves. We tried unsuccessfully for about 5 minutes with the number they provided us. Finally, I redialed 911 and pleaded with an officer at the Oranjestad Police Department to call for us and report the robbery (since they wouldn’t/couldn’t connect us) did he say he would call them for us and have them dispatch a car. At roughly 1:00 p.m. we were told that a police car would be dispatched to us. By 1:30 p.m. I had placed 4 additional calls to the Oranjestad Police Department because no Police Patrol ever showed up. With every call they became increasingly impatient with me, and curt. Eventually on the 4th call they told me to sit there and wait for their Police Patrol car to show up, and hung up me!

After about 45 MINUTES OF WAITING WITH NO SIGN OF THE POLICE, we pulled out our map and drove to the station. The Police station was about a 5-10 minute drive from our location. Once we got there, we began to give our report to an officer on duty. However, she told us we would have to wait until the detectives who were assigned to our case returned to give our official statement. The officer told us they weren’t in the station because they were out looking for us. It was roughly 2:00 p.m. when we arrived at the San Nicolas Police Station. Our detectives strolled in at 2:30 p.m. carrying lunch in their hands. They were notified we were there, and went into the back. Finally, one detective emerged around 2:45 p.m. to take down our statement.

He asked me where we were when we were robbed, and what was stolen from us. I started describing the items to him, and giving him an estimated value of their worth. He wrote down nonspecific objects. We had 2 bags stolen from our car, and he did not note down their color merely their brand. The only value he noted was the cash value stolen from us.

The Police was very unhelpful, lackadaisical and disorganized. We sat at the police station until almost 4:00 p.m. so that our detective could write up a 3 sentence statement for us to bring back home with us.

Our whole experience dealing with the Aruban Police was terrible. We felt helpless, and like minimal effort would be made or put forth to find our things. Their facilities were extremely technologically outdated, and their officers were very unprepared, inefficient at report writing/questioning, and negligent throughout our time there.