Aruba - Day 1

Hi everyone!

Thank you to everyone who made the wedding extra-special! We had last-minute help from so many people, it was truly overwhelming that so many people who mean so much to all of us were there to support us as we start our lives together.

I am currently sitting in our fabulous hotel room in Aruba (on Palm Beach) and Travis is sleeping, so I thought I would share some of our highlights and experiences so far - so that we don't forget. I'm not going to edit this so excuse any typos.

We stayed in a beautiful hotel Sunday night which reminded both of us of Europe - the door to each room looked out on a little garden with a fountain and the cafe where we ate breakfast on Monday. It was very romantic and a surprise for me (because Travis wouldn't tell me ahead of time where we were going!)

We got up relatively early on Monday, despite the fact that we were both rather tired, because we needed to catch our plane! So we went downstairs to have a HUGE breakfast first! They had homemade oatmeal and omlettes made-to-order and coffee. But they insisted that we had to wear shoes, which was sad because I only had my high heels from the wedding day (and my feet were really sore!). But my wonderful husband (I love saying that!!) volunteered to run back up to the room for me and retrieve them!

As we ate breakfast we kept overhearing on the news that there was a really bad storm going through Chicago, and we could hear the thunder through the roof of the hotel. So we decided to hurry up and get going to make sure we didn't miss our flight! But we threw our lucky penny into the fountain (which we found heads-up while we were taking pictures).

After taking several detours due to knocked over powerlines and trees from what turned out to be a "wall of wind" during the storm (which had only lasted about an hour), we finally got to the airport. Our plane was only delayed about 15 minutes!!

While on our second flight, we watched the sunset and saw a lightning storm.

When we finally got to our resort, we were exhausted, but we were excited to see our room had a full kitchen, a huge bathtub and even a little patio, which we can see the ocean from!

We took a little walk on the beach to the only restaurant nearby still serving food after 11pm at night - a sushi bar!

Which sadly, had no sushi left, but they had what tasted like the best turkey sandwich we've ever had (or we were just really hungry). They also had these giant hanging sculptures on the ceiling, which we tried to take pictures of, but they were all blurry.

Next up: First snorkeling trip!