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?
Ugh to anything that tastes of Heineken. I hate a bad beer. In Scotland we have a beer that is almost famous enough to be out national beer Tennents but it smells and tastes of tramps piss.yuk.
Looked cool, I love the vividly coloured buildings!
Tennents it's very popular in Italy too 🤣🤣 but I really dislike it, I think most people buy it only for the high gradation.
Oh my goodness. It is a shockingly bad beer but yes, some people do drink it for the strength!
Yeah most of the "Premium Domestic" beers around the world (Budweiser, Molsen, Coors, Millers...etc.. every country has their own version)
that are, or were, immensely popular before craft Brewing became a thing, are actually made with really cheap ingredients and a ton of additives to keep costs low. Heineken uses high fructose corn syrup for its malt (not sprouted barley or grain) and you can taste how gross that is when you're used to craft beers that use proper ingredients. All of the premium domestic beers are like that - very cheap ingredients with a lot of added extra crap (salts, sugars, various preservatives, head stabilizers...etc). All of those beers taste like shit to me and give me a headache and hangover after drinking 2 of them lol. Most times I would rather drink nothing simply because I feel like crap after drinking one. I'm probably being really dramatic here 😅😂
Haha, you're not. I feel exactly the same way. When I'm faced with a choice and that choice is those kind of really cheap shitty beers I tend to think I will drink wine instead. I just hate wasting drinking time on shit things
Yes exactly. That's what I do as well. There are always way more wines to choose from and you can usually find a half decent glass from any menu.
Hmm, I can't imagine that in Curacao. It's too 'civilised' for that 😂
Seeing these photos makes me want to visit again. I wish they didn't have the bloody snakes in the town and I'm happy that you didn't add one in your post.
Stunning photos.
Did you cross the bridge while it was open?
Yeah the lack of beer out of coolers was disappointing.
We didn't see any snakes during our visit, so that was good.
We didn't cross the bridge. It was too far in the distance, if it's the one that I think you're asking about. we did take ferry across the canal though
As far as I remember, the bridge is in the centre of the town, but it was probably a distance from where you stayed.
That's the coolest love lock statue(s) that I've ever seen, and the woman is ace. If I saw a replica of a statue depicting a Caribbean woman like that one, I'd buy it:)
Yeah the love lock and female statues were very cool. Both were very unique in their design and story. The female statue was very large - like life size basically. But I wouldn't be surprised if they made smaller ones to sell to the public
So fun! I just started writing about our ABC cruise out of Panama that we took in February. We also enjoyed Curacao and it was my husband's favorite as well. We spent two days there as ours was an 8 day cruise. We really enjoyed it and you caught the island vibe really well in your photos. How was the blue drink? I heard about it, but we didn't try it. We were there on Rhapsody of the Seas.
That's cool that you went as well. Our trip was also an 8 day cruise but we only stopped in each destination for one day.
The drink was good. It's just orange liqueur similar to triple sec, but with blue food coloring
Ah ok! Interesting! This was our first cruise and I'd love to go on another one some day. We have six kids, and the youngest is turning 5 this week (oldest is 15), so traveling without them at this point makes life difficult and too expensive to take everyone! Ha! They all want to go after hearing all the stories (especially of the food) after we got back. 😅
Okay yeah that would make thk gs a little difficult for sure. Yeah I bet they would want to go. A lot of the ships have kid zones and water slides on board. Maybe keep that a secret for a few more years 😉
Ha! That's the truth. Our ship just had two pools that were chest deep. We didn't really spend much time in them. No slides, so we would have to take the kids on a more exciting one.
That seems about standard for the pools on the ships that we've been on. They aren't very deep really. I think our might have had an extra pool in the solarium for adult only but it was waist deep and more for sitting and chatting opposed to swimming
Wow! Definitely not what you see on the movies! Ha!
So cool trip, well it's really see that it was a colony from Netherlands, the photos you share looks like Amsterdam 💕 by the way I didn't like both Heineken or Amstel 🤣 im patriotic my fav easy beer it's the Moretti.
Yeah it really did look like Amsterdam in a few spots. The combination of the architecture and the water.
Moretti sounds familiar - is that from from Spain?
I want to be in that place. My spirit wants to go and see all this up close, my friend @leaky20 My heart thanks you for all these landscapes that you share. My grandmother who raised me was from there and I think that's why this has become my big dream to fulfill. Come for me, explain everything I have to do to enjoy a ride to that beautiful island
Well I hope that you get to go and see it one day in person. It was a nice spot in the Carribean. We enjoyed it.
Wow - its so colourful there, and I am very glad you got your self a blue curacao ! it was interesting to lean about the new language there - I'd never heard of that before.
Looks like a lovely place !
Yeah I found that interesting about the language also
Yeah we made a point to try one. It had to be done
Wow
There is no way you won’t enjoy this cruise vacation
The pictures are lit. I love that ship
It’s so big!
Yeah it was a fun vacation. We generally like cruises.
waoo!! this is a really good trip!! a lot of beautiful colors, palms and also is so impresive to see a really big cruise! so wow!
Yeah everything is very colorful in the Carribean. The cruise ship are quite big indeed.
Thanks for the support!
Love all the colourful buildings! No doubt the influence and connecting with The Netherlands can be felt through many aspects, the architecture being one of them :)
It was a very colorful place.
The architecture was the main thing that I noticed but I wonder what other influences it has on the location.
Wow nice place specially the colour full buildings
Yeah the buildings we very colorful indeed. 😁
Wonderful place.😊
We quite enjoyed it. 😀
Good to hear.😊 I think you don't want to leave the place.😅
It's always hard to leave any vacation destination 😅😆😓
Wow. How nice.
Congratulations, your post has been added to Pinmapple! 🎉🥳🍍
Did you know you have your own profile map?
And every post has their own map too!
Want to have your post on the map too?
Hiya, @ybanezkim26 here, just swinging by to let you know that this post made it into our Top 3 in Travel Digest #2209.
Your post has been manually curated by the @pinmapple team. If you like what we're doing, please drop by to check out all the rest of today's great posts and consider supporting other authors like yourself and us so we can keep the project going!
Become part of our travel community:
Wow,I really do love this, different beautiful pictures of many colors all mixed together,very beautiful! Love this post.
Thanks. I'm glad you liked it!