Palm Beach for families
Protestant Church: Oranjestad's working Protestant congregation, in the heart of the capital. Cas di Cultura: Aruba's national arts centre, where the island's own performers program the calendar. St Ann's Church is the parish church of Noord, closest of the historic churches to the Palm Beach strip.
Palm Beach for families with kids, in numbers
- Score for families
- 8.2 out of 10
- Picks on this page
- 17 places across 2 lists, led by Protestant Church, Cas di Cultura, St Ann's Church
Questions families with kids ask about Palm Beach
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Family-friendly
Palm Beach, Aruba scores 8/10 for families. The 2-km beach has calm, shallow Caribbean water with no undertow on most days, and the high-rise hotel strip puts restaurants, pharmacies, and air-conditioned malls within walking distance. Trade winds keep the 28-30°C heat tolerable. The main drawback is cost. Budget $250-400/night for a resort room with enough beds.
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Is it safe?
Palm Beach is one of the safest resort strips in the Caribbean, and we rate it 8.5/10 for solo-traveler safety (see the TTDI Solo-Safety Index). Violent crime against visitors is rare, and the risks that reach you here are unattended bags on the sand, rental-car break-ins at Arashi and Baby Beach, the UV, and rough water on the Arikok coast.
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What to pack
Reef-safe SPF 50+, polarized sunglasses, and a windbreaker for Palm Beach's constant 15-25 knot trade winds. Pack quick-dry clothing for 27-33°C heat, a rash guard for snorkeling, and sturdy shoes for Arikok National Park's volcanic rock trails. Aruba runs 127V Type A/B outlets, so US travelers can skip the plug adapter. Buy aloe gel locally near Hato for half the US price.
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Getting around
Rent a car or take fixed-rate taxis. Aruba has no Uber and no metro. The Arubus L10 line connects Palm Beach to Oranjestad for $2.50 one way, but runs infrequently after 9 PM. The hotel strip along J.E. Irausquin Boulevard is walkable end-to-end in 25 minutes, though midday heat makes even short distances feel longer.
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Best time to visit
Head to Palm Beach between late April and June, when the Easter crowds have cleared, hotel rates on the high-rise strip fall by roughly a third, rain is close to zero, and the trade wind keeps 31°C afternoons bearable. Skip Christmas to New Year if price matters, and October to November for the stillest, stickiest air.
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Curated for families with kids
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Must-see attractions
Palm Beach is where most visitors to Aruba sleep, but the sights worth an hour are spread across the island, so treat this list as a set of short drives out from the hotel strip. The dates run from 1813 to 1952, a span that sits uneasily with an island most visitors think of as beach and nothing more. This list is for the traveler who has had three days of sun and wants to know where they are. None of these stops asks for a full day, and several in Oranjestad are close enough to cover on foot, while the rest reward a rental car and a free afternoon.
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Best museums
Palm Beach, in Aruba's parlance, is the resort strip; the museums that matter to a curious visitor sit a short drive south in Oranjestad, where an 18th century fortification, a small archaeological hall, and an aloe estate all cluster within a few blocks of each other. The five rooms below are the ones worth the detour off the beach. None is a blockbuster, and that is the point: each is small enough to read carefully in an hour, and each argues a different piece of the island's story, from pre-Columbian pottery on Schelpstraat to a working aloe operation on Pitastraat. Skip the resort concierge circuit that sells the same catamaran twice; the island's history is downtown, and it is cheap or free to walk into. Bring water, wear something with sleeves for the air conditioning, and treat these five as one afternoon rather than five separate errands.
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