Aruba

Aruba is a great winter escape from the United States. It’s a 4-hour direct flight from Washington, DC. All the beaches are public and very clean, so you can explore all the beaches around the island on your own. Just about all of them have incredible white sand and clear water. Read the full itinerary for descriptions of all the beaches we visited.

Aruba also has delicious tap water that’s distilled locally in a water desalination plant. One of us is very picky about how water tastes and loved being able to drink water straight from the tap.

Since we were traveling during peak season, hotel prices were a bit steep, but worth it to spend a few days on a beautiful, warm island in the middle of winter. Food prices were about the same as a large US city, so not terribly expensive but not cheap either. While the US dollar isn’t the local currency, everywhere we visited listed prices in US dollars and we paid for everything in US dollars.

When you’re heading out of the country, you’ll want to get to the airport 3 hours early if you’re leaving during a peak period and/or on a weekend. You need to go through several lines (Aruba customs, security check, US customs, and another security check) before getting to your gate.

Wednesday and Sunday were travel days, so our itinerary below is for Thursday through Saturday. Wednesday and Sunday included casual drinks and meals by the beach and plenty of relaxing.