World Cruise -- Curacao

How many times have we been to Curacao? I’ve lost count but we love the port even though some on board made fun of it. It is not nearly as chaotic as St. Thomas (Charlotte Amalie) and you aren’t overwhelmed with insistent hawkers of goods and services like at St. Lucia and other places. The architecture is quaint. It’s Dutch and colorful and reminds me of the Netherlands a little.

There are several canals running through the town and the main one has a pedestrian bridge that connects one side with the other. It floats and moves back and forth to allow for ship traffic to pass through. There is also a ferry that makes a quick two minute trip back and forth in case you don’t want to wait for the bridge if it’s open.

We chose to explore a different section along the main canal and one side canal and were excited to find the local market. We didn’t venture into the large building that I’m sure housed many more stands but preferred to check out the ones that were out in the sunshine and fresh air—fresh except for the scent of fresh fish being scaled and cleaned.

The fruits and vegetables which we found out later came from Venezuela (about 40 miles away by boat) were beautiful. I don’t think I’ve seen more perfect bananas in a long time. We asked what the long root vegetable was and found out it was cassava, a staple of the Caribbean diet. Apparently it can be made many different ways including grated and dried to use in bread.

The boats that lined the canal must have gone to Venezuela and then returned with their cargo. The stands were set up in front of each boat lining the street.

We wandered about some more and crossed the bridge again to get back to the side where our ship was docked. On a previous visit we were docked near a nice mall area with some lovely restaurants and shops and we headed in that direction. Enjoying the shade, we strolled and window shopped and people watched.

All in all our morning walk was about three miles according to my Map My Walk app. Of course it took longer than the hour and fifteen minutes the app recorded because I paused it each time we stopped to look at something or rest from the heat.

Back on the ship in time for lunch and an afternoon of paddle tennis. This guy of mine is going to be in some great shape by the time he gets home again. I prefer to get my exercise “promenading” on the Promenade Deck and turning pages on my Kindle.