Bucuti Beach Resort & Tara Beach Suites & Spa Hotel

We chose this hotel as we wanted a quiet location for our honeymoon.
It was perfect, nice and quiet, no tacky evening entertainment, just two happy hours each day and during our 2 week stay there was only one family - it is mostly couples that stay here and as such is not really designed for kids.
There is only one bar, right on the beach and the restaurant is situated on the beach too. The food and choice is very good, and the portions large.
We pre-booked the dine-around programme which allowed us to eat three course meals at the hotel or various restaurants around the island, which was great for variety and good value if you have a huge appetite.
We would recommend Le Dome Restaurant as especially good.
There is not that much to see on Aruba, inland is mainly cactus with a few sights to see, and downtown is full of restaurants, casinos and jewellery stores -designed to attract the many American tourists. However, the main draw to this island is the snorkelling, diving and watersports.
The sea is warm and our hotel certainly has the best position on Eagle Beach. Clean beach towels are provided daily and there was always free loungers and shade available (although July is in the quiet season).
The staff in the hotel are lovely, very friendly and happy to help. They especially treat honeymooners well, with a special discount package available around the island.
The rooms are very clean, the facilities are very good although the bathrooms need to be updated.
We paid a lot more for a deluxe room; unfortunately this was identical to every other room, except we were on the ground floor with a sea view, which was slightly blocked by palm trees.
The sea view was better in the standard rooms on the upper floors for a much cheaper price! However, there is a new building in this hotel which has very modern, well designed rooms and better sea views!
A lot of the other hotels in Aruba are high rise, and quite ugly pre-fabricated concrete structures.
So overall we thought Bucuti Beach Resort was the best and we would recommend Aruba to someone looking for a relaxing time, a clean white sand beach, good food and a splash around in a lovely clean warm sea.