Definitely a quick trip from Aruba to get to this largest of the ABC’s, Willemstad, Cruaçao, much shorter than the voyage that brought the first cruise ship here in 1901, the SS Prinzessin Victoria Luise with her 200 passengers from Germany.
There’s some pretty interesting history on Curaçao where inhabitants go back millennia with pre-Columbian peoples. After being “discovered” and claimed by the Spanish in 1499, just fourteen years later in 1513 Diego Columbus, Christopher’s oldest son, declared Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao to be the “Islas Inutiles” or the “Useless Islands” because they had no precious metals. However, all of Willemstad’s downtown is a UNESCO World Heritage Site due to all the colorful Dutch architecture.
Connecting the two sides of the bay is the Queen Emma Bridge, also known as the Swinging Old Lady.
She’s a pontoon bridge built in 1888, her 500 ft (152 m) of length is held up by sixteen pontoon boats and she swings laterally thanks to two motors that open and close her. We walked across and then watched later as it swung open to allow a small boat to pass through.
There are colorful colonial buildings on the Punda side known as the Handelskade and are probably the most well known sight on the island. The story goes that they were not always so colorful, all of them used to be whitewashed until the governor ordered them painted pastel colors in 1817 to reduce the glare around town. They’re beautiful colors.
We walked through many streets and located the colorful steps of the Otrobanda stairs. These colorful steps first came to life during the Kaya Kaya Festival in 2018, an annual community-driven art event in Otrobanda. Local artist Avantia Damberg transformed these once ordinary stairs into a joyful kaleidoscope of geometric patterns and vivid hues. She aptly named her creation “Colorful Steps” or “Otrobanda.”
We walked around and sat on the steps for a while, mainly to take a break! today was another hot humid day.
On our 2 1/2 mile walk around town we found a shaded restaurant and order the largest bottle of water and a Coke Zero. The cost was $9 but we were so hot we didn’t care.
We stopped on the way to the shop for some real Dutch chocolate bars for us and our room steward. She’s doing an amazing job and we heard she loved chocolate.
No entertainment tonight until very late so we watched the cowboy game and picked out a movie on Amazon Prime. Royal Caribbean supplied us hdmi cables and adapters for our tablets so that we could watch some of our familiar shows.
We had a Dushi day! Meaning nice!
May God bless you all.
Chuck and Lea Ann
WorldTravelReynolds 