We come now to the last stop of our Carribean cruise vacation and it just happens to be my favorite stop that we visited on the trip.
The stop was Willemstad Curacao, but without too much preamble, lets just get right into it.
Curacao is a small island in the Carribean located close to the island of Aruba and just off the coast of Venezuela.
Willemstad is the largest city in the country and also its capital.
The country is a major resort destination and the city holds the main port where cruise ships dock at so I'm sure that they must get a lot of visiting tourist during vacation season.
The country of Curacao is a colony of the Netherlands so it has a lot of Dutch influence and its actually very noticeable in different parts of the city - especially in some of the architecture that we came across.
There were actually spots that looked so similar to areas that we saw in the Netherlands that I probably wouldn't have been able to tell the difference in a photograph had I not known the location prior.
I think it was a combination of the architecture style and hiw the buildings were built along the edge of the canal.
Speaking of canal, we had to take a small ferry across it to get to the other side.
It was a unique little feature that I liked about the location.
There was also a self guided walking tour that started right at the cruise port.
It was just a bunch of plaques with historical information written on them but it was still a nice little feature that I enjoyed about the city.
I always like to learn something about any place that I'm visiting.
For instance, Curacao is made up of 40 different nationalities and it host 162 thousand people, 80% of which are Dutch Carribean.
Another board that we came across spoke about the language of the country and how its official languages are Papiamento and Dutch.
Papiamento is a relatively new language that developed over the 17th and 18th centuries as a means of communication between different nations.
This all took place during the slave trade era, so the bulk of the structure and sound of the language is African in origin, but it also inter-mixes words from other languages as well.
There were quite a few of the information boards, maybe 12 or so in total, so it was a pretty good little walking tour overall.
The city was very clean and well kept and also had a lot of character to it.
A large canal separated two sides of the city and both sides had unique features that worth exploring.
On the side of the port was a newer area that was a little fancier, with upscale cafes and restaurants and an outdoor mall area for shopping.
The buildings were painted in very bright and vibrant colors
and there were a ton of palm trees planted all over.
This space seen in the photos was built on the old fort with the new structures built in and around the old ramparts.
Wooden staircases and boardwalks criss crossed the space allowing people to move between the restaurants and cafes on the lower courtyard and what looked like commercial office spaces above.
The area definitely had an upscale tropical resort feel about it.
Crossing the canal brings you over to the old town that has a lot more character and is a little more gritty looking.
It had some more laid back beach style restaurants and bars and the more touristy style shops.
The buildings were painted in bright colors as one would expect.
Both areas were very different
but pretty cool in their own ways.
A few other cool random things that we saw were the love lock statue shown above and below,
this somewhat odd but cool family scene made out of rocks and coral
and this statue created during covid to support local artists in the absence of tourims. Essentially they sold 1cm² spaces on the statue for advertisement of the donators logo along with a small painting to accompany it. It was a successful crowd funding project and a smart way to stay in business I think.
One of my favorite things that I remember about visiting some other destinations in the carribean is buying beer from people selling them out of coolers in the streets. On this trip I was on the lookout the whole time for that in both Aruba and Curacao.
Unfortunately I didn't see a single person selling beer like that at either location.
Not even at either of the two markets that we came across in Curacao.
We ended up stopping at a bar in the old town to have a drink and I ordered an Amstel... that unfortunately was awful. It tasted like Heineken (which I hate) and I almost couldn't drink it. I know that I'm a beer snob, I'm sorry, but I have yet to try a Dutch beer that I like. I enjoyed the setting though.
Later on when heading back to the ship we found a small outdoor kiosk selling a local brew that turned out to be really good.
The seating area was located next to the water and the waves were crashing into the rocks which also made for a neat spot to enjoy our drinks.
There were all of these little crabs in the space around the tables that were fun to watch as well.
We grabbed one more drink at an outdoor bar before heading back to the ship completely. I don't think that you can visit Curacao without having a blue Curacao drink. What do you think?
