2/9 – Curacao – afternoon in Willemstad

On the way back to town, I have a stop marked for a Flamingo Habitat, but everything I’ve read says it’s a good place to use your telephoto lens – and well – we don’t have one, and we are supposed to see flamingos tomorrow on Bonaire, so we ditch this stop as well and head toward town on a search for gas. We actually manage to find a convenient station a couple of blocks off our route and pull in for a fill up. You have to go to the cashier window, give her the credit card and tell her we want to fill up in order to release the pump. We think we have it handled, I pay, she gives me change in guilders (weird – but I guess that’s the only way they can do credit cards?) only to drive out and find the gauge isn’t registering full. Sigh. So, back we go, the cashier looks at me like I’m crazy, but, what can we do? The tank only takes a little bit – the gauge has got to be messed up – and once again I get change in guilders and we just figure this has got to be good enough. We have to leave the gas receipts in the car, so we are hoping this will suffice.

Finding our way back to the port is simple, and our car is parked and locked in the lot in no time. It’s a little after noon, and we want maximum time to walk around town, so we just empty out the ice in the cooler (we’ve eaten all the food), fold it up and shove it in the back pack as opposed to taking time to go back aboard and drop it off. Then its off on foot through the Renaissance Hotel and Casino complex with stores and restaurants surrounding a long courtyard built into the Rif Fort and out onto the promenade that lines St. Anne Bay leading to the Queen Emma Pontoon Bridge. With 3 ships in port it is packed with people, but not as badly packed as yesterday in Aruba, making it much easier to walk the streets and cross the iconic swing bridge built in 1888 with fabulous views over the water to the Queen Juliana Bridge, the tallest bridge in the Caribbean, and then on to the pastel colored buildings on the Punda side of the city.

We have a whole walking tour mapped out, but at this point, we are more interested in finding a place to sit, hang out and have a beer. As we wander down the main street, Breedestraat, we find a little courtyard in the middle of the Dutch inspired buildings, with outdoor tables and free wifi – that’s us. Luckily, we snag a table in the shade and order a Brion beer for me and an Amstel Bright for Ed. The Amstel Bright is brewed with desalinated water allegedly from the island (although we’re not so sure about that – we think it might be made elsewhere and shipped in – but nonetheless – it’s a local beer). It’s a nice place to chill for a bit, enjoy the shade and the breeze and people watch. After a bit, our harried waitress comes over with nachos – we tell her we didn’t order them and she gives us this perplexed look, then walks the nachos over to the bartender and has a whispered conversation with him, looking at us. Whatever, we didn’t order any nachos and we’re pretty darn sure they aren’t complimentary!

Beers finished, we’re ready to move on, but the waitress is nowhere to be seen. We finally ask the bartender for the check, but he doesn’t come through with it. So we flag down someone else and ask them. No check appears and our waitress is studiously ignoring us after the nachos incident. Fine, we’re not sitting here forever. I know how much the beers cost, so I give the right amount plus the guilder to the bartender, thank him and leave. We can only imagine it will be the same scam as the Cabo San Lucas scam from a few years ago when the waiter said we didn’t pay. Only this time we are all alone and there is no one else they can go to trying to extort money. Oh well.

Past the main touristy area (with all the expensive stores and tourist stuff) we find Wilhelmina park where the Curacao and Dushi letters are located (Dushi being the local word with a million different meanings from sweetie to delicious to simply describing “all the good stuff.”).

Then we push further into the Pietermaai neighborhood, reputed to be a much more quiet, although equally beautiful, neighborhood not over run with tourists. It is as advertised, and on a narrow little side street that is supposed to have a rocking night life, we find Mundo Bizarro, a bar/restaurant I had read about that has outdoor seating, live music, food and beverages. It sounded like our kind of place, and it turns out it definitely was! It was like a ruin pub straight out of Budapest! All distressed furniture, walls covered in great old memorabilia and a fabulous mosaic bar. The outdoor patio looked great too, but just as we entered, the skies opened up so we made ourselves comfy inside at the bar.

A couple of Brion beers later, and a nice little chat with the bartender, we are on our way back to the ship, stopping to wonder about the 2 folding chairs sitting at the edge of a crumbling parking lot at the waters’ edge and visiting the Temple Emanu-el, built in 1865 by a Jewish sect that had broken away from the orthodox sect and is now used as a government building housing the Council for prosecution. As we approach the swinging bridge we see it was open and is just closing – and there are people still on it! Bummer! We had no idea you could actually be on the bridge when it opened. How cool is that? Too bad we don’t have enough time to wait for the next opening – or we’d be riding that thing for sure!

Crossing the bridge to the other side, we stumble upon some parade with a ton of horses and floats and blaring dance music. The horses are all in specific groups, their riders dressed in different costumes. They are fun and colorful and a great spectacle to see. The last group are prancers (or trotters or something!) – they look like they are dancing down the street. Totally fun way to end our day of exploration.