Aruba - "one happy island"

We just finished spending a week in Aruba with a few friends.  Not much planning by us as we've both been extremely busy at work. So thanks to Timmy, a.k.a. our travel agent.  Also thanks to his parents' time-share, we were able to stay at the (very) nice Marriott's Aruba Surf Club for a good deal!  As in $20 per person for the whole week good deal!!!  So we only paid for our airfare. Can't beat that, huh? That's what good friends are for :-)

This blog entry will serve 2 purposes.  One is for our own sakes if we ever do come back to Aruba.  The other as a tip sheet for other travelers to Aruba who might stumble upon this and find it useful.

Marriott's Aruba Surf Club (if you happen to stay here)

• Bring your own inflatable tube to use in the lazy river.
• The $3 fries at the resort is one of the best deals we found and the fries are surprising good!
  

Transportation

• Arubus (get it, get it) is the island's public bus system.  It's very easy to navigate and cheap.  For the 5 of us to get from the "high rise hotel" area into Oranjestad downtown it's only $11.50 round-trip, take about 20 minutes.

Shopping

• Aruba really doesn't have any local souvenir, but jewelry seems to be the thing here.  Say you happen to be in the market for some jewelry or a watch, you might be able to find good deals here especially since there's no tax.  For example, there's a Tiffany's and Chopard here and if you know the exact product you want, check the price before you come (or on the web once you're here) and then put on your bargain hat.

Food
Everything on this island is expensive! I guess we shouldn't have been so surprised since it's only obvious as everything is imported here.  After 8 days here, we all agreed that the best meal was at the local joint "Shahai".

It's even better when a local dude who spoke a little English came up to help us with the orders and then bought us a local dish of mixed rice with beans. To thank him, we bought him the local Balashi beer. As we took this picture he said "don't make me famous on the Internet."

And if you're a baller or if one of your best friends proposes to his girlfriend on the island at sunset, then you can go splurge and celebrate at Aqua Grill, good seafood place.

So that's about all the tips we can think of and remember.  Good weather (except for about an hour of thunderstorm with one video), good food and good companionship made it a great week here.  See all the food we had, various places we visited, Liz's new ring from Jeff and some bumpy vidoes from the ATV tour.  Head on over for the 150 photos and videos.

San Antonio Rancho PG&E trail on Path Tracker

We don't know how to do things in moderation.

Jean mentioned that we should go for a hike this weekend and of course, I suggested it that we try the PG&E trail in the popular San Antonio Rancho Open Preserve.  We did this trail about 3 years ago with a friend's dad.  Yes, a father had to take us and we almost couldn't keep up with his crew of other older parents.  Back then we were just a little more in shape and that was quite difficult already.  Fast forward 3 years, add a few pounds (for me), and we naively thought, "hey, what the heck, let's do this again"

To our surprise we actually did the whole 6+ mile loop in about 3 hours.  But we were huffing and puffing and aching that afternoon.

On a side note, one of our favorite iPhone applications is "Path Tracks".  As you can see below, it sometimes forget to drop breadcrumbs and towards the end, it got as tired as we did and decided to just shut down for the day.  It's really easy to use, you start it on the iPhone and as you walk, it'll leave points where you can then later save it up to pathtracks.com for a pretty picture like below. Check out the one we saved on Saturday and also screenshot below.

mystery lady in yellow

You've been in a situation where you recognize a face, but can't figure out where you've met this person or when, right?!

Yeah, that happened to me at a recent wedding.  As our friend humorously captioned the moments that led up to us figuring out who this mystery lady in yellow dress was.

Jeff: "Dude! Just go ask her if she knows you."

Thomas: "What?!!! I can't do that? I'm gonna look like a fool!"

Shin-i (if he was around): "Seriously!!!"

Jeff: "Alright, I'll get Shin-i's dad to introduce us."

In addition, I wasn't the only one who thought I've seen her.  Two other friends at our table also agreed that her face looks *so* familiar, but none of us could pinpoint where.  We all live in the south bay, so we were on the right track.  "Ranch 99?" "Target?" "that Chinese restaurant we all like to go to?"

It turned out she is the post office lady in Cupertino!  Guess we all still use USPS a little too much.  Too funny!