Day 3 – Yummy in my tummy...

November 03, 2023

Day 3 – Yummy in my tummy...

The day started like the rest; Kim gets up early, eats an acceptable breakfast buffet at the Ritz-Carlton, and sits through 4.5 hours of talky talky. I sleep in, have some breakfast and coffee, check emails and the latest YouTube videos, talk with the neighbors and plan our afternoon adventures. By this is time it is 11:15 and I head out to check out home improvement seen in Aruba. There is no Menards, no Lowes, and not even a Home Depot. Depressing! I find a big box Do It Center. This place is a combination Target and Home Depot. They have a full grocery store, furniture, home appliances, clothing, hardware and lumber. We need these at home. Look out Menards.... By this time I need to get back to make lunch for the bride. The mousetrap almost got me in an accident exiting the parking lot making a left hand turn into traffic. I had the little 2 horsepower engine singing darting into traffic.

Back at the AirBnB lunch was spaghetti and meatballs with cheesy garlic toast. As Joanne would say “..it was bust'n..” Following lunch we had about 4 hours to explore before our 6:30pm Portuguese cooking class. Our first stop was the Alto Vista chapel on the East coast. The current chapel has an Virgin Mary shrine inside and seating outside for the one weekly mass, al-fresco. It was rebuilt in 1954 after the original 1750's chapel had fallen into disrepair. Along the drive to the chapel were the stations of the cross next to the road. We hiked the ½ mile from the chapel to the ocean. The shore on the East side is this hard corral rocky surface while the West side is the sanding beach side. So no swimming for Kim. Also, the sharks frequent the East side.

Following the chapel visit we hopped back in mousetrap to head South to visit the old town of Oranjestad. This is there capital city and also has the cruise ship port. We parked mousetrap a couple blocks from downtown (free parking) which happened to be near the San Francisco di Asis Pro-Cathedral which was blessed by Pope John Paul II in 1990. It was locked so no pictures. We continued to walk to the main part of town with the souvenir shops and restaurants cater to the cruise ship customers. Today only a smaller cruise ship, Freewind, was in port. I guess it gets very busy when several of the big ships are in port. Following the obligatory “I love Aruba” sign picture mousetrap took us back to the AirBnB to get cleaned up before the cooking class.

The cooking class was in a residential home just South of the airport. There was no sign and addresses really are a thing here, but luckily the Grandma sent pictures of the house to identify it. Once in side she spoke about how here parents came from the Portuguese island of Madeira for work in booming oil refinery economy of Aruba in the 1960's. She is one of nine siblings. When her mother died in 2014 she had 45 grandchildren, 40 plus great grandchildren, and 20 plus great great grandchildren. Needless to say there family is the biggest Portuguese cohort on the island. The dinner consisted of a mimosa type drink but with vodka, grilled beef tenderloin chunks, boiled and seasoned potatoes, fresh salad and naan type bread. While we cooking her two sons, that now live with her, came in and I asked all kinds of island infrastructure questions like power generation, fresh water supply, waste water treatment, and trash deposal. You know all the cool stuff. Here are the short answers; diesel generators, desalinated sea water, septic tanks that are pumped and then treated, and incinerated. The 2.5 hours flew by with the all the topics discussed we hugged the grandma and the mousetrap got us home.

Tomorrow is the Jolly Pirate sunset cruise with all you can drink included. I will have to watch Kim with the booze....