Fish on Thanksgiving

Clau and I went to Aruba for the Thanksgiving week - it was a good way to get some time to ourselves with a limited number of vacation days. I don't think we'll be going back there - it has the advantage of being (relatively) nearby and environmentally unspoiled, but other than that the whole damn island feels like one big tourist trap. I'm guessing that the population when we were there was probably equal parts tourists and locals (and probably swings to the tourist side during the winter months). Overall I did get what I wanted: beach, tropical drinks, a little time to get reacquainted with my wife, etc. However, there were many things that I didn't like and why I wouldn't recommend Aruba to my friends. In my usual fashion, I've compiled a list of gripes:

• Every hotel and some of the restaurants automatically add a "service charge" to the bill. In hotels, this charge gets tacked onto _everything_, from the restaurant to the spa to the coffee cart in the lobby. Unprovoked, they will go to great lengths to explain to you that it's not a gratuity. It really started to piss us off after awhile. After that experience, I understand how Clau feels about taxes in restaurants in the U.S. (in Brazil, taxes are included in the menu price, so end up spending what you think you'll be spending). Of course, the "service charge" is even worse - you could make an argument either way on including the tax in the price, but it's something that the restaurant has to pay to the government no matter what - it's just a matter of factoring it into the listed price or not; what these hotels are doing is setting a price, then asking for 15% more on top of that price for no apparent reason, then expecting a tip on top of it. I should also mention that the prices are roughly equivalent to NYC (although the quality is generally sub-NY).
• Everything is geared towards Americans. Perhaps this seems like an odd gripe, but when I go to another country, I like to feel like I'm actually in another country. The fact that every transaction takes place in English with prices in dollars takes away from some of that charm - especially when the prices are just as expensive as home.
• It's way too difficult to find good fish. This place is an island with lots of local fish, yet nobody seems interested in serving it. Of course, that's partly due to the last point; Americans don't generally like fresh fish (you can argue with me on that one, but most common ingredient on every menu was beef, and it probably wasn't because it's easier or cheaper to get in Aruba than fish). We tried to eat fish the whole time, and 50% of the time it was a disappointment.
• Although there seems to be very low unemployment in Aruba, almost everyone is employed by something for tourists (i.e. in a hotel or restaurant). In other words, their entire economy seems to involve other people coming to the island and spending money, as opposed to generating their own money and goods. There are very few (if any) aspiring entrepreneurs or small business owners there. As a result, nobody seemed to have any money of their own. One of the many consequences of no local businesses is that we didn't find any "local" restaurants (and we looked!). I was hoping to find a hole in the wall with the smell of seafood and the sound of families speaking Papiamento coming out - as far as I can tell that place doesn't exist, or else it's extremely well hidden from the gringos.
• The Radisson (where we stayed) was extremely structured; you had to sign up for everything, and the times were pretty limited. Breakfast is from 7-10:30, lunch is from 12-2, etc. Not that the food in the restaurant was terribly good anyway. Clau started referring to it as "camp". Oddly enough the best breakfast we had was on our last day - we ordered room service, got a ton of food, it was better than the food we had in the restaurant (although it was probably the same kitchen, so maybe we just got lucky) and cheaper as well. Go figure.
• The Radisson also screwed up our bill. We knew we had booked some kind of special or discount, but we didn't bring the reservation paper with us (hey, we were on vacation!). When we got the bill slipped under the door the night before checkout, there were some charges on it that we knew we hadn't made, and there was no discount of any kind. We went and asked the front desk about it that night (it was admittedly 11pm or so) and they said that they would have to leave a note for the accounting department. The nice man at the front desk wrote down our request on the bill and put the bill in the accounting department's inbox. We decided to follow up early the next morning before breakfast, and - surprise! - the note had magically disappeared overnight and nobody professed to know anything about it. The woman working at the front desk said that it would take about an hour for the accounting department to put together our receipts. I wanted to go back to the room and have some breakfast, but Clau pointed out that the front area would soon be packed with people checking out, and if we didn't stand over them and watch then the "accounting" simply wouldn't get done until it was too late (and really, shouldn't all the receipts for a given room already be together, if for no other reason than to assuage guests who fear they may have been wrongfully charged?). I sighed and admitted that she was probably right. So, we waited for an hour an a half, until finally we were presented with the reciepts. Sure enough, two of them were obviously not ours (names and signatures didn't match, although the room number did). The "accountant" (actually the same woman who was working the front desk) removed the fraudulent charges from our bill, and upon request discovered that we had in fact booked a $100 discount (which, as my father says, had been "conveniently forgotten"), and took that off. All in all, the bill went down about $200, and all it cost was our last three hours of vacation.

Of course, there are some good points:

• Very safe - I've spent a lot of my time in Brazil looking over my shoulder. Aruba is an extremely safe place. Hell, there was one mysterious disappearance and it made headlines for weeks.
• Unspoiled beaches. Turquise water and white sand everywhere. Absolutely gorgeous. Even better if you put blinders on and ignore all the fat, loud, pasty people around you (I don't fall into this demographic because I'm not loud).
• Beautiful weather - damn hot, but it's always windy so it doesn't feel crazy hot. Bring sunscreen if you're a paleface like me.
  
• Fresh fish - if you can find it.
• Really good drinking water. All of it comes from a desalination plant, which means that it's basically seawater that's turned into steam, re condensed, then filtered. Very, very clean.
  
• Balashi beer - local beer from Aruba, made with the same water. Surprisingly good (and I'm a beer snob).
• Casinos - if that's your thing. Of course, it's nothing like Vegas, but the blackjack's pretty good - $5 minimums and nobody seemed to give a shit about me counting cards (of course, that could also be because I lost anyway).
• Friendly locals, most of whom speak English. The few who didn't speak English spoke Spanish (and my guess is that they're generally immigrants from Venezuela or Ecuador), so we were never unable to communicate. Everyone who you need to interact with (cab drivers, waiters, etc) speaks English.
• Although the Radisson definitely wasn't worth it, the Spa is very, very good. Clau and I got massages and it really felt like a first-class kind of Spa (or course, it also wasn't cheap - more than $200 for a "couple's massage", but it's the only thing in the Radisson that's really worth the money).
  

So, overall, it was just what we wanted but there's a myriad of reasons why we won't go back.
Lots going on at Company_A, I'll write all about that soon.