William Schwartz

Curacao is one of the Dutch ABC islands, the others being Aruba and Bonaire. On a previous cruise we stopped at Aruba and I determined it was not one of my favorite Caribbean islands. I was pleasantly surprised by Curacao. There is a new pier to accommodate the large cruise ships. We were fortunate to be able to dock at one of the old piers in town. The approach to Willamsted is fairly narrow. Most ships enter through the narrow passage into a harbor area, turn around and come back to the pier. If you are interested in such things you should be on deck. The Costa ship in front of us made that precise maneuver. We, however, simply pulled into the channel and sidled over to the pier. On leaving, we pushed away from the pier and backed out of the channel. An interesting maneuver!

The Queen Emma bridge crosses the navigation channel. It is a pontoon bridge built more than 100 years ago. It swings to the side to allow ships to pass. When it is open there are ferries to transport pedestrians back and forth across the channel. Willamsted is a bustling place. My wife noted that it has more shoe stores than any place she has ever seen. There is plenty of shopping. A block or two away from the main shopping street you will notice unoccupied store fronts. There were enough of them to make me wonder if the economy in Willamsted is suffering or if the store owners have simply squeezed too hard for rent. The main area of Willamsted was relatively clean and the bright pastel colors of the buildings give the place a charming atmosphere.

We took a tour from the ship in the afternoon. The Triple “S” tour - Sharks, Seaquarium & Submarine - was a two part tour. The first part took us to the seaquarium. It is an interesting place that we did not have quite enough time to explore. There are the standard aquarium displays. They also have outdoor holding tanks that were being refurbished. There is also a diving aspect to the aquarium which was not part of our tour. Additionally, the seaquarium has a tourist submarine which was not operating but was available to go into to observe underwater. The tour of the seaquarium finished with a dolphin show. Overall, it was worth seeing but it was not something you have not seen before. The second part of the tour was the submarine. Actually it was a semi-submersible which is essentially a glass-bottomed boat. We were bussed to a resort where the semi-submersible was based. The trip on the semi-submersible is the best that I have been on. The quality of the tour was the narration of the tour guide and the activity on the reef. A very interesting tour!

Check out the shore excursions available in Curacao.
Curacao Shore Excursions

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