After staying up much later than we would have liked, working, cleaning and packing, Jer got up with the alarm at 6am and made breakfast, letting Jess sleep until 6:30. We ate, showered, finished cleaning and packing, and headed out at 8:50 am to get the NJ Transit train to Newark Airport. We got to the airport in plenty of time, got our boarding passes and wandered around for a while, stopping for an Auntie Anne's almond pretzel and calling our bank and credit card companies to let them know we would be traveling. Our flight was delayed because Continental switched to a larger plane at the last minute (a 767, instead of a 757) to accommodate increased demand, it being Spring Break season. We took off about an hour late, and the flight was uneventful: we had mediocre cheeseburgers and salads for our in-flight snack, but the flight attendants came around frequently to offer us drinks, which was nice. Although the Continental 767 had personal TVs in coach, they didn't allow you to start and stop the movie, and the in-flight games were boring, so Jer napped and Jess read. The flying time was about 4 hours, and Continental had built some room in the flight schedule, so we arrived in Aruba about 30 minutes late. Immigration was a breeze — we gave them our landing cards, they stamped our passports, and that was it.
We picked up an island map and some travel brochures in the Arrivals area, then caught a cab to Marandi. The restaurant is beautiful, an open-air wooden platform with a thatched roof, built out over the sea. The staff seemed quite surprised when we showed up straight from the airport, but they let us pick a table by the water and brought us an extra chair for our bags. Jer got a caipirinha (made with fresh limes, not like the imported Mexican ones in NYC grocery stores), and Jess had a fruity, girly Celebrity Martini (raspberry vodka, Cointreau, cranberry & pineapple juice & a dash of champagne). The appetizers were so tempting that we decided to make a meal of them — we got the appetizer special (a trio of hot-smoked tuna, spicy tuna tartare and pepper-crusted tuna tataky), sesame shrimp tempura (actually 3 enormous prawns) and salads (a Laguna garden salad for Jer, and salad with a fried Brie and peaches for Jess). For dessert we split kletskoppen, lacy Dutch cookies served with ice cream and fruit sauce. We watched the sun go down over the water as boats went past, heading back to the marina; it was really relaxing after a long day of airports and airplanes. All-in-all, dinner was very good to excellent — everything was yummy, but the tuna tataky and the kletskoppen were the highlights, and the sea views and friendly service were spot-on.
Our server called us a taxi, and a very jovial taxi driver drove us up to our hotel. Along the way, he was happy to tell us about Aruba and point out the few sights we passed, which made for an interesting ride. The MVC Eagle Beach is a two-story hotel with a restaurant, Tulip, in the courtyard. After wandering around for a bit, looking for the front desk, we eventually headed into the restaurant. The bartender/night manager came out to give us our room key and breakfast tickets and asked us to stop back in the morning for our official check-in. We headed up to our room on the second floor, and one of our neighbors showed us the trick to open the door. Our room was not fancy, but spacious, clean and comfortable, plus we could hear the surf! Once inside, we unpacked and got organized so we'd be ready for our ABC Jeep Tour in the morning. Then Jess wrote in this journal until bedtime.