Aruba, Day 3

It was another day of waking up at 8AM for me.  I think my inner clock is set to wake up at that hour because it's the same time I wake up on the weekends.  Charlotte woke not long after and she in turn woke up Allan. We ended up at breakfast an hour earlier than the day before. Come to find out, heading to The Palm around 9AM is peak time since everyone wants to get their food in before heading out to the pool and beach. The weather was perfect too because it was partly cloudy and the sun wasn't beating down yet.  I was a little disappointed in today's breakfast selections (not that anything would change, but I was hoping the waffles would be there again.)

Charlotte waits for us by the door as we get ready to head outside.

We didn't spend much time at The Palm and were pretty much in and out. Once again, we enter the room and Charlotte gets upset. Does anyone see a pattern here? After explaining that we were getting ready to go to the pool, she calmed down only to get impatient again because Allan and I were taking too long to get ready. Yes, my 11/2 year old was getting annoyed because her parents weren't moving fast enough. We'd spend the next hour at the pool, enjoying our fruity drinks and taking turns holding Charlotte in the water. The sun was beginning to peek out but it wasn't beating down yet. Charlotte started asking for her pacifier (which we still need to wean her off of) and it was a sign nap time was not that far away.  We left the pool and went back upstairs.  Cue the crying child again, but she calmed down after her bath and having a banana as a snack.  Allan told me I could go back to the pool for a little bit and I did.  I couldn't help it, I wanted more time in the water. I stayed our for another half hour to forty-five minutes. This resulted in a tan, because well... I tan easily.  So now, I'm a brown Filipino as a opposed to a light brown one.  Charlotte fell asleep by the time I got out of my shower and would stay asleep until around 3:00PM.

Our original plan of heading to the buffet at The Palm for lunch was nixed because of Charlotte's nap (they end lunch at 3), so it was back to The Beach Club for burgers, hotdogs, fries and nachos.  They had some rice, vegetables and fish also, but I was only in the mood for the rice, aside from  hot dog and fries.

The three of us headed to the beach after eating and it was an interesting experience. Well, for Charlotte it was a new experience. This was her first time on sand and I'm not sure she knew what this was all about.  The concept of sand was foreign to her and it took a few minutes for her to get comfortable sitting on the sand.  Once she did, she was content filling her bucket with sand over and over.  We spent a little bit of time on the beach before heading back. Charlotte saw the pool and wanted to go back there, but I had to explain we'd be going in again tomorrow. I'm not sure she understood because she said, "Pool! Pool!" as we walked by.

Dinner sent us back to The Palm for Mexican Night.  But we ended up eating from their pasta section instead.  I did have some corn and rice and pork.  The dessert was my favorite part, because of all the different sweet treats that were there.

We liked to cap off our after dinner experience with a walk so Charlotte can burn off some energy.  So we took a trip to the lobby, letting her walk about.  And always, it's a challenge scooping her up so we can head back to the room for the night. She always wants to be out and about.  I have a feeling Allan and I will be in trouble when she gets older.

Time to head back to the room.

Now, what came afterwards would be classified as "That time we..."

After walking down the hallway, Allan stuck his hotel keycard into the door and the indicator blinked red.  Thinking the card was de-magnetized, I used my keycard and it gave us the same result.  We took another trip to the lobby, another "YAY!" from Charlotte and we explained to the front desk our keycards didn't work.  They ran our cards through again, we headed back upstairs and it was the same result.  We headed back down, explained the keycards still weren't working and this time, they called a security guy to come look at the problem. We went back up, waited in the warm hallway and no one came for five minutes. Again, another trip the lobby, which only Charlotte probably found amusing and the front desk called security, who told them his key worked fine. They issued us new keycards and those didn't work. Finally we were able to take the security guy up with us and he was able to get us in, but the keycards weren't working. As it turns out, it was a door problem and the security guy spent the next few minutes fixing the it. According to him, whenever the resort gets fully booked, these situations happen and they don't know why it does, except the the battery in the door lock is fading.

The wifi going in and out of our room was the next issue but I'll chalk that up to the fact that the resort is likely very full right now due to the holiday weekend. Charlotte went down at half past nine and I finally got all of my blog entries up to date.

A night time shot of the pool 

Saturday will be our last full day in Aruba.