re: Aruba vacation spot

I went there a while back. I stayed in the Palm Beach area where the Hyatt, Hilton and Holiday Inn are. Pretty nice, standard Caribbean resort fare. Plenty of decent bars and restaurants. There's a karaoke bar on the end of a pier that's really fun and a popular restaurant in the area the serves good American food. Water comes from a desalinization plant so is safe to drink. It's easy to buy things you may need. Ocean is crystal clear and warm but very calm with no waves. Some people love that and some people don't.

A lot of Dutch tourists, as this is their island getaway. Drugs and prostitution are decriminalized so if you are out and about at night you will be solicited. Casinos seemed a little drab to me, but it might be fun to place a few bets as a beach bum.

There's a cheap and effective bus that travels the western road along the beach if you want to get around. The main city is nothing special and mostly caters to the masses getting off cruise ships for a few hours. Or you can rent a car and drive down to Baby Beach or over to the eastern coast which is a completely different ecosystem and feels like you are in a different part of the world. Other than that I would avoid the non-tourist areas as there has been an uptick in crime since the big oil refinery and shipping port shut down, which was a big part of their economy.