Beautiful Streets, Good Eats

Our adventures exploring Curaçao today takes us to the Punda side of Willemstad, the capital city. This side of the capital has amazing pastel colored Dutch colonial architecture, narrow beautifully cobbled streets perfect for tourist walking and alleyways filled with vibrant art and things to see and do!

When we arrived at the city, we looked for a nice park on the outskirts of the main streets in some sort of city park or square as seen in the above drone shot. As you can see there is a church in the top right some government buildings as two tourist signs to take pictures with! One was their national tourism word DUSHI which means good, awesome, sweet, lovely and the other was CURAÇAO.

We parked the car in an available spot and started our exploration at the church which did not seem out of place with the vibrance of its color and intricacy of its architecture. When we got closer to the building and read its sign, we realized that it was not a church, but in fact the public prosecutor's office! Boy were we wrong!

Next we moved to the DUSHI sign, you can see the public prosecutor's office in the background. It was so much bigger than it seemed in the drone shots and there were a lot of tourists taking photos there! People saw me with my camera and kept asking us to take photos of them, the pains of being a photographer! I did not mind though, I love helping people!

Next up as you guessed it was the Curaçao sign! At this point it became apparent as we got closer to the city centre to walk and shop, that everyone was doing what we did and had the same idea to park and walk. Well it was such that you could not drive or park easily anywhere within as it was for tourists walking mostly.

We took about two minutes of walking until we finally got to the main streets with all of the shops, restaurants and beautiful alleyways! The color and architecture as well as the level of cleanliness of the streets blew me away! It was such a pleasure to walk and take in the beauty and there was no rush or haste as one would feel in the city nor was there any feeling of danger or insecurity!

Immediately the Dutch colonial architecture and and vibrant colors set the mood and tone that would persist for the rest of our journey. Cobbled roadways added a nice touch to the aesthetic as well as a differently colored sidewalk cobble. It felt more like walking in a theme park rather than a city (much like those of a certain theme park in Orlando, Florida).

The first thing we saw was a Tommy Hilfiger store that looked so grand with its brilliant architecture, I almost passed it strait expecting it to be another government building!

Near to it though was THE actual government building, it was sort of hilarious to me that I got it so ironically wrong! The above shot shows the Parliament of Curaçao. I just love Kòrsou much more than Curaçao, its so much nicer on the mouth feel!

As we walked in more into the streets, the colors just kept getting more vibrant and varied. There were no cars at this point driving on the roads and so there were no loud engines or smelly fumes, just peaceful and relaxing walking.

I found this little mini building that was so alarmingly small and narrow yet it looked so cool with its own unique color. It was some sort of souvenir shop that was not as yet open.

We encountered this lovely cafe called La Bohème. It turned out that this was one of the places my wife had seen on instagram and wanted to visit during our walk today! Its lovely decor on the outside was interesting with what I assumed was a Parisian cafe look or maybe Italian.

It was kind of hot so we decided not to dine outside but in. The atmosphere was relaxed with a sort of bar atmosphere. There were nice old advertisements and rustic art on the wall that set the tone for its aesthetic!

The decor was somewhat unorthodox but I really did love the uniqueness of it all that came together to bring the place to life!

We ordered a quick refreshing "Citrus Explosion" Smoothie that lived up to its name and was very invigorating and much needed in the Curaçaoan heat! We did not stay long as there was much more to see.

I could not help but take pictures of this souvenir shop with its neatly arranged goods and its explosion of color! There were many of these shops around the city and it was so hard to not want to stop at each!

Lower down from La Bohème was the Jewish Cultural Historical Museum that is a UNESCO heritage site. It was grand in size and had these large and beautiful doors. We did not go inside as we knew we would end up staying a little too long and so quickly moved on.

As we walked along, we realized that there was no alleyway that we had not passed and there was not something interesting or eye catching within them. Each one had either intricate, colorful art, plants or shops. This was such an iconic part of the Willemstad experience and it was so much fun to find an alleyway and check out what it had to offer!

We needed some caffeine to put a pep in our step as we had been shopping around for a while and the heat of the sun was tiring us out! Not only that, we needed iced coffee and fast! We decided we could hit two birds with one stone by visiting a nearby coffee house called BONCHI that my wife also wanted to visit that she saw on instagram.

The air conditioner was extremely refreshing as well as the decor! It was a lot to take in at first but this place was just as unique in character as the last.

There was one side that seemed to be posh and comfy, almost lounge like with a large couch, a throw over duvet and pillows with books.

The other seemed to be more industrial for those who wanted to have a quick drink or do work while they had their coffee. The wall and the old windows which seemed to be taken from an actual old building really appealed to me.

I ordered an iced espresso that was served on top of a glass of orange juice on a nice wooden server. A nice sugar cookie was also given with it that cut the acidity of the coffee and juice perfectly! I had never had orange juice with coffee before like this and it tasted amazing! My wife had an iced cappuccino which was also just as refreshing.

After refreshing our energy stores, we walked again until we got to this opening somewhere in the middle of the city like a square with a lot of restaurants, bakeries and other things to see and do. It was quite relaxing and peaceful with large trees for shade.

There were lots of little stands int this square. In the scorching heat, this popsicle man was making a mint with all the hot and bustling tourists! It seemed to be very tasty and refreshing!

As we got closer to the end of the city that met the ocean's edge, the buildings got even more colorful and bright. The stores got more high end and expensive as well! Soon, in the distance, we saw the iconic lineup of Dutch styled buildings that were on all of the souvenirs we passed by in all the shops during our exploration of Willemstad.

After much shopping and exploring, we had reached the end of the city at Queen Emma bridge that took you across the ocean to the Otrabanda side of the city that was covered in a previous post!

The above photo is what the ocean front looked like at the end of the walk through the beautiful Willemstad, the Capital of Curaçao! It was a rewarding site at the end of the journey through a clean, safe feeling and well decorated and taken care of city. Willemstad will never be forgotten as one of the most memorable and well maintained cities I have ever visited! Thanks so much for coming along! Cheers!