With the oncoming winter, any chance to escape the cold weather (and boy it is cold) is a much welcomed one.
My cousin, Dave and I set off to this event (Kim and Marisol were to meet us there), NY Mag and Lewis Black bring Aruba to NY. We also had about three more events to go to. Anyway, we arrive at Canal Room to find that I plus one (my cousin) is on the guest list but Dave is not. Turns out Dave didn’t remember to RSVP (tsk, tsk – I guess we attend too many events to remember to rsvp to all). He said he’d wait for Kim to arrive and be her plus one. I told my cousin to go in while I waited with Dave for a bit and left a message for both Kim and Marisol just in case explaining what happened but he decided to head over to the second event (which I will talk about in another post).
Anyway, this event was to highlight the island of Aruba and to unveil the “90,000 Friends” campaign. If you ride the subway in NY, you should recognize this photo from the Aruba ads.
I went inside and was immediately brought to Aruba. We were surrounded by first, glorious warmth, then the beautiful Aruba carnival costumes
After sampling the fantastic Caribbean hors d’ouevres (never got a photo becuase they went too quickly), I made my way to the bar where my cousin held court. We asked for the drink special but they were all out already, so the bartender made this other cocktail (which is now my new favorite) that was beyond excellent. So excellent that after I was gushing to the bartender, everyone else started ordering the drink
Soon after, the Aruba Ministry of Tourism came on stage and introduced the board staff and tonight’s performer, who got the crowd going
I got some video from the event as well, enjoy below
Anyway, we danced a bit more and drank a lot more. We really hated to leave but there were more events to go to. As always, here is the giftbag
