Y’all know what happens when it’s 20° in New York you make a last-minute decision to find some SUNSHINE. This past weekend we headed to Aruba for the first time since 2008. Aruba actually holds a special place in my heart because that’s actually the only place that Joe and I tried on engagement rings!! October of 2008 Joe took me to the diamond district downtown. We tried on just a few rings and then about two months later we were engaged!! Anyways that was a sidenote back to the realness of magical sunshine and Aruba.
In 2008 we actually stayed at the Radisson which was lovely however I could not find it! It is not there anymore and has been replaced. No worries because we upgraded our stay. When we were there the first time we took a walk and checked out a lot of the hotels on the island and the one that we called ‘the most fabulous luxurious resort’ was the Hyatt Regency. After almost a 10 years break we thought lets stay at that really luxurious open flowing space with great architecture and landscaping of the space. Unlike the Radisson they had a swim up pool, a slide, and multiple hidden Jacuzzis. GUESS WHAT? we stayed there!!! We really could not be disappointed! We immediately were welcomed in at 1 PM, received a great room with a small balcony on the fifth floor, and immediately headed to the sun.
Sidenote on the products that they give you there from Pharmacopia. They were fabulous! All natural and made with aloe vera which you truly need throughout the trip to make up for some of the extra sun from the Caribbean. This one in particular is the argon oil collection and I love it because it smells like watermelon and it actually has a little bit of sparkle in it so its basically perfect!! I could’ve brought home at least 17 bottles
FOOD AT THE HYATT REGENCY
We ate a plethora of our meals on the resort and tried plenty of variations. CON: I wished they had different menus at different restaurants. Whether you go out on Piet’s Pier or sitting by the pool the menu is the same.
After trying majority of their items my top 3 favorites were;
- Caesar salad – crunchy romaine and NOT anchovie tasting even though the menu literally says “white anchovies”
- Grilled chicken sandwich – it has their island native Gouda cheese yummmm. If you’re not familiar Aruba is a Dutch island so they have all the amazing Gouda cheese that you usually snag up in Amsterdam.
- Sweet potato TOTS they are so bomb.com! Fresh, crispy, I think we’ve ordered them three times!! DIP CAREFULLY: Key note here make sure instead of dipping them in ketchup or the sweet sauce they give you, ask for the ranch because ranch is life when it comes to tots
- Runner up: Chicken Fingers – random I know but I think they are crusted in cornbread crumbs which make them SUPER crunchy! YASSS
ADULT POOL REVIEW
Let me just say that the Hyatt made us feel super exclusive because we were actually hand picked from our seats at the main pool to be test dummy‘s for their new staff at their brand new ADULT POOL & CABANA area which you can see below. Not only did we get to be in the space that wasn’t open to the public yet but we were able to try out all the food on the menu (which is how I narrowed it down for you) and FREE DRANKKKKKKS. We were waited on by their lovely staff as they introduced the space. The insta-worthy cabana is stocked with water, sodas, cold towels for your face. They even have spray bottle Evian (I normally take on a plane for a fresh face) in the fridge so you can spritz yourself whenever you needed. Everything was fabulous we could not have felt luckier to be chosen! Plus we had two friends joining us that day from the plane and invited our friends we had met at sunset the night before!! The six of us really enjoyed the entire day at the adult pool at the Hyatt Regency. THANK YOU THANK YOU.
PLAY TIME – WATER SPORTS
You can’t sit on the beach the entire time… (CAN YOU?!) We wanted to get moving with some fun water sport toys. THE GROUP LOVES TO GO TUBING. Although it’s not my cuppa tea because I have some back issues but my friends and my husband absolutely die for it! You can see some of the photos below – (if these were live you would see that they actually got flown out of the tube and into the water and kept going back for more)
We also RENTED A BOAT from the same place that you rent the tubes. We specifically wanted a private boat for the 6 of us so we can play our own music, and bring our own alcohol. Other option was $50 per person for 2 hours, open bar, a slide and lots of people. That was just not the vibe you’re going for if that’s YOU DO YOU. Our boat was actually called SpongeBob. Yes, you heard that right it’s called SpongeBob. Highly recommend this route. It was $200 for an hour but split over six people you really don’t need more than an hour and a half to two hours out in the water since the sun is so strong you need to be careful about burns. You don’t feel the heat when you are zooming around in the water but we highly recommend getting your own little catamaran jumping off, getting into the freshwater, and enjoying every bit of Aruba! Plus our driver took us over for some view of the lighthouse. (Instead of renting a four hour ATV tour to see the lighthouse just get on the boat see it from a far) it’s all Gucci!
We did all of these water sports through our home girl OLGA running the water sports stand by the Hyatt. She could not be sweeter to us. She hooked us up, gave us floatys for the boat, and really made us feel like family! Make sure if you are trying to rent a boat or tubes or water skiing that you find our girl Olga she has a short bleach blonde hair and show her some love.
RESTAURANTS
Let’s get into restaurants the one restaurant that we absolutely had to revisit without fail was Madame Jeanette’s. This was our favorite restaurant not only in Aruba but actually my husband swore that this was his favorite steak tenderloin for years even after leaving so we had to go back and see if
- A. if it was still that yummy
- B. if my husband’s pallet had changed
- C. if they still had the main appetizer on the menu!
When you sit down the app is to die for! I don’t know why I love it so much it’s basically just bread with some type of garlic butter and then they give you pickled spicy onions I mean heaven! Our first visit we loved it so much we asked if we could have bread to go. At that time we were really trying to save money so we basically kept the bread and the onions in the fridge for the week. When we arrived on the island we always make our first stop the grocery store and pick up anything we needed like alcohol or snacks so that we weren’t paying high prices on the resort. Story is; we bought a rotisserie and paired it plus the bread and the onions from Madame Jeanettes for probably three days for lunch because it is that good!!
Update Joe still loves the tenderloin but I actually loved the pork tortellini that they make fresh and house that we all shared for the table. It’s pretty heavy so I advise to get wine for the table for you to share instead of getting it as a meal.
TRANSPORTATION TO MJ’S
Just hop in a quick cab over to Madame Jeanette it’s actually inland and it’s about a $13-$15 ride ,10 minutes from the Hyatt but worth it!! Make sure that you put on some bug spray!!! FUNNY STORY Our first visit even though it was a great meal I got bit by a bug on my eyelid so I couldn’t open my eyes but you can see that clearly that experience did not derail us from going back!!
We also went to Gianni’s which is an Italian spot right across the street. This is not my favorite place because I think it’s really touristy while not being equally delicious. If this is your first time and you have never had pasta out of a Parmesan cheese wheel then maybe you want to try it but it’s definitely not my go. There were two other restaurants that our taxi driver recommended that we were not able to try specifically the Italian one that she said was better than Gianni’s was Soleo Mio I’ll give you the details below.
We were also recommended to go try sushi at the Ritz. We went there on our first night and I was pretty disappointed and underwhelmed. The prices are absurd, the sushi was fair, but let me just tell you the martinis were strong so it really didn’t matter, now did it!
The last morning we walked down the street past Gianni’s to a little breakfast bar called Lolas that was hopping with people. I tried to breakfast tacos and Joe has the acai bowl which were both delightful! If you’re going to eat breakfast at the hotel there’s not many options… they do have a Starbucks but the only thing I can tell you is that a piece of banana bread is basically the size of your head but it might cost you $10.
If you have any questions about planning a trip to Aruba please reach out in the meantime take a peek at some of the pics below on the outfits that I put together! Some included on my SPRING BREAK STYLE GUIDE for you to shop my faves!
