Cruisin
If you can't carry it, you don't
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- Oct 11, 2003
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Day 3 - Aruba (part 2)
After lunch we had booked a bus tour shore excursion.
We left the ship to meet on the pier with our tour guide. We were shown to our air conditioned bus and set off on our tour.
Aruba, taken from the ship.
Aruba is a Dutch island, so here is a nice Dutch windmill
The landscape in Aruba is quite desert like. There were tons and tons of cacti everywhere you looked. There's also quite a lot of contrast in the vegetation and landscape. You get the cactus and the luscious looking green hills and the very rocky areas. Quite an interesting island.
On our tour we passed by a local cemetery. There they quite often bury their dead above ground in tombs that look like little houses. They will bury a person in the family tomb. When another family member passes away after a certain number of years they will remove the first coffin and condense the bones into a smaller coffin and shove it to the back of the tomb and then add another coffin to the tomb. Our guide called it the original timeshare
Also their tombs are colourfully painted. Every couple of years they paint their homes in Aruba. When they have painted their house they will go to the cemetery and paint their family plot to match the colour of their house.
After our tour we returned to the ship where we had a bit of a rest until it was time to dress for dinner.
After dinner we went to evening show which was a comedian, whom I remember to be quite funny. That night they also had the ice skating show. It was interesting but we weren't that impressed by it for some reason.
After that hanging out at the Duck and Dog for a bit and then off to bed.
Tomorrow........ Curacao.
Just a little side note about the dining room servers.
We found our servers to be just so so. They didn't have a lot of personality and didn't seem really eager to please.
The second night I asked to see the children's menu. I was told they only had one in Spanish and that I wouldn't want anything off of it anyways
Well, I think that I should be the one who decides whether I wanted anything from that menu, not the server. I did ask for and receive the chicken noodle soup from the children's menu. My waiter tried to persuade me not to order it but I did and it was delicious.
The next night he again said they only had the childrens menu in Spanish. He did eventually bring me the menu.... in Spanish. He sent someone over to translate it for me. Unfortunately, his Spanish was no better than mine.
I asked the server why there was no menu in English Are there no English speaking children on this ship What do they do for them, give them the Spanish menu Extremely strange.
The next night he finally managed to find me a menu in English
Given that the ships have their own printing capabilities, I found it strange that no English menu was available for the first 4 nights of a 7 night cruise.
Our assistant waiter also was sporadic. Some nights we would get lots of beverages and other nights some people would get offered them and others not.
Dining room experience was not the most pleasant on this ship. I felt by the end of the cruise that our waiter was doing his best to annoy me
Definitely NOT a Disney Cruise Line experience.
After lunch we had booked a bus tour shore excursion.
We left the ship to meet on the pier with our tour guide. We were shown to our air conditioned bus and set off on our tour.
Aruba, taken from the ship.
Aruba is a Dutch island, so here is a nice Dutch windmill
The landscape in Aruba is quite desert like. There were tons and tons of cacti everywhere you looked. There's also quite a lot of contrast in the vegetation and landscape. You get the cactus and the luscious looking green hills and the very rocky areas. Quite an interesting island.
On our tour we passed by a local cemetery. There they quite often bury their dead above ground in tombs that look like little houses. They will bury a person in the family tomb. When another family member passes away after a certain number of years they will remove the first coffin and condense the bones into a smaller coffin and shove it to the back of the tomb and then add another coffin to the tomb. Our guide called it the original timeshare
Also their tombs are colourfully painted. Every couple of years they paint their homes in Aruba. When they have painted their house they will go to the cemetery and paint their family plot to match the colour of their house.
After our tour we returned to the ship where we had a bit of a rest until it was time to dress for dinner.
After dinner we went to evening show which was a comedian, whom I remember to be quite funny. That night they also had the ice skating show. It was interesting but we weren't that impressed by it for some reason.
After that hanging out at the Duck and Dog for a bit and then off to bed.
Tomorrow........ Curacao.
Just a little side note about the dining room servers.
We found our servers to be just so so. They didn't have a lot of personality and didn't seem really eager to please.
The second night I asked to see the children's menu. I was told they only had one in Spanish and that I wouldn't want anything off of it anyways
Well, I think that I should be the one who decides whether I wanted anything from that menu, not the server. I did ask for and receive the chicken noodle soup from the children's menu. My waiter tried to persuade me not to order it but I did and it was delicious.The next night he again said they only had the childrens menu in Spanish. He did eventually bring me the menu.... in Spanish. He sent someone over to translate it for me. Unfortunately, his Spanish was no better than mine.
I asked the server why there was no menu in English
Are there no English speaking children on this ship What do they do for them, give them the Spanish menu Extremely strange.The next night he finally managed to find me a menu in English
Given that the ships have their own printing capabilities, I found it strange that no English menu was available for the first 4 nights of a 7 night cruise.Our assistant waiter also was sporadic. Some nights we would get lots of beverages and other nights some people would get offered them and others not.
Dining room experience was not the most pleasant on this ship. I felt by the end of the cruise that our waiter was doing his best to annoy me
Definitely NOT a Disney Cruise Line experience.
