My Carnival Liberty Vacation 2022

And now Week 3 of my 7-week series on my 8-day fun-filled vacation on the Carnival Liberty out of Miami Florida.

It’s Day 4 of my cruise, and we arrive in beautiful Aruba early on a Tuesday morning just before 8 AM ship’s time (Miami Florida) / 9 AM local time. I didn’t have a shore excursion until 1 PM, so I had plenty of time to relax on the ship, and to also walk into the downtown area (just off the pier) to take some pictures and do some souvenir shopping.

The port is Oranjestad. Also at the port was a small Church of Scientology cruise ship – and an old familiar friend from a decade ago – the Norwegian Epic (now based out of San Juan Puerto Rico). I sailed on two 7-day cruises on the Epic 13 months apart in December 2011 and January 2013. The first cruise was a lot of fun during the 7 days leading-up to Christmas Eve. The second cruise was not as much fun with various maintenance issues with my cabin and poor customer service. I haven’t sailed on #NCL since, and I don’t plan to anytime soon. But it was cool to see the Epic docked at the port. I wish her and her passengers many happy sailings !

Oranjestad is located on the upper south coast of Aruba. It’s the capital and largest city of Aruba with a 2010 population of over 28,000. Accounting for small growth since then it may be a little over 30,000 today. Aruba itself has a population of between 110,000 and 120,000, so a little over 25% of the nation’s population live within the capital. Aruba is a country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It’s located less than 20 miles north of Venezuela and the top of the South American continent. It’s about 20 miles wide from northwest to southeast, and it’s always less than 6 miles from north coast to south coast.

I took an organized bus tour of the island for 4+ hours. I was last on the island in October 2012 (via another Carnival cruise). I did a similar tour back then. Looking back at my photos from 2012 we visited many of the same places on this tour. It was a fun tour that covered the western two-thirds of the island. Our bus driver / tour guide was very knowledgeable, and he had a fun sense of humor.

I took almost 50 photos of the island. I’ve selected six of the best to present here: