You Look Like the 4th of July! 🎆🇺🇸

Jul 4, 2024

Sending out a giant Bir-day You Yo to America! 🎂🇺🇸

Most years my dad and I travel for his birthday at the end of June. So with that, we’re usually also away for July 4th. Last year we celebrated in Fayetteville, NC by watching distant fireworks from our AirBnb’s backyard. This year we had to take advantage of the fact that we were in ARUBA!

As I mentioned previously I joined a couple of Facebook groups prior to arriving in Aruba, to help with finding activities to do on the island. Earlier in the week I saw several posts about July 4th fireworks festivities for Americans. My two uncles and aunt weren’t familiar with the goings on of the day, but they were intrigued by the fireworks.

We decided to checkout the fireworks show in the Palm Beach area, the Marriott resort was hosting a show at 9pm. MooMBa beach was also hosting a drone show, but I expected the crowds to be much larger there, so we opted out of that one.

We left the house around 7:45pm and made our way 20 minutes north to the Palm Beach area. I was both shocked and not surprised by how PACKED the area was. I wasn’t sure if this was normal for a Thursday night, or if July 4th brought people out in droves. Parking was an absolute nightmare…I didn’t realize Aruba could accommodate that many cars, but somehow there they were. After driving around for 10–15 minutes, we were finally able to find parking at the Hyatt since that lot was pay-to-park and open to the public (spoiler alert: the pay booth was broken so we didn’t have to actually pay 🎉)

Side note: I had some interesting observations while driving around looking for parking. This was really the first time I saw more than a handful of tourists/Americans in a given area. For context: we’re staying in an AirBnb in Santa Cruz, so we are surrounded by native Arubans. So arriving in the “high rise” area felt like traveling back to the US, which was really neat to experience.

Once parked we walked about a block to the beach and found a pretty calm area. We hung out on the beach while waiting for the show to start. Unfortunately, the hotels had locked up all of the chairs/loungers so we weren’t able to sit and wait. However, we managed to find some vacant palapa tables that were sturdy enough to lean/sit on, so we were set.

The fireworks started promptly at 9pm with loud explosions coming from the Marriott resort. Even though it lasted only 8 minutes, the show was truly impressive.

Once the show concluded, there was a mass exodus from the beach. Most people were likely headed back to their resorts for dinner. My family and I were in dire need of drinks, as we foolishly didn’t pack any water. We headed back to the main drag and found an outside area with a restaurants section pretty close to where we parked. There we found some live music at Mambo Jambo bar (featuring John Mayer and Latin covers), a small local art market, and a few quaint little bistros.

My dad and one of my uncles grabbed us a table at one of the restaurants, Salt & Pepper Tapas, while me, my aunt, and my other uncle walked around the art market in search of interesting souvenirs. While wondering around we also discovered a really large mall across the street, with a lot of souvenir shops. My aunt was still in search of a few goodies for my little cousins, so that was the perfect place to look. After about 30 minutes of shopping, we headed back to the bistro to join my dad and uncle.

Back at Salt & Pepper, we quickly ordered a few light snacks to tide us over, as the kitchen was about to close for the evening. I ordered the Loempias and they were DELICIOUS (so good that I didn’t get a chance to snap a picture)! 😋

📖 Story time 📖 While eating, several people walked by us dressed in very American outfits, flag motifs and all (obviously it was 4th of July so it wasn’t much of a shock to me). My uncle turns to me and asked if it was normal to dress like that in the States. I told him it’s pretty attire normal for the holiday, I was used to seeing more eccentric outfits. I chose to dress a bit more understated, opting for a navy tank top that read “Land that I Love.”

After eating and listening to bit more live music, we took some pics at another I ❤️ Aruba sign, and headed back to the car.