A Fort Turned into a Mall

After we crossed the Queen Emma Bridge in the Capital City of Curaçao (as seen in the last blog here), the fort just on the other side is what we explored next! Coming from Trinidad, where our english forts are left to rot and become dilapidated, it was quite refreshing to see the Curaçaoan heritage locations be used in such a smart manner to be a tourist commercial center as well!

For those of you who missed it, this is a view of Queen Emma bridge from the other side once we crossed it, with a view of Willemstad and the iconic lineup of Dutch style influenced buildings and their vibrant colors. You can also get a good view of the pontoons that keep the bridge floating and able to move open when a vessel needs to pass by! You can see footage and more photos of the bridge and when it was opening in my last blog here!

Turning left after stepping off the bridge, there is a great colorful market to get past first before getting to the fort that you can see in the photo above on the right. There are a great many of colorful souvenirs that depict the iconic lineup of the buildings as well as other regalia of that represents the Curaçaoan spirit!

Once we got past the market, there were these huge cobblestone walls that looked so secure yet menacing. There were also these medieval style yellow hanging banners that told us that this was the Rif Fort also known as the Renaissance Mall. There were canons all around as you expect of a fort and a boat load of tourists (including ourselves)!

As we approached the entrance to the fort, I did not expect the walls to be so high and so thick! Through the opening of the mall, I could see a colorful blur of people, restaurants and other stores as well as so much to see and do! The sign also said that the fort was built in 1828, imagine the warfare this would have seen!

Once through the opening, revealed was an elaborate framework of beautifully built storefronts and restaurants that were skillfully added to the existing structure of the fort. They intelligently utilized the fort and built stores into its framework and structure so that nothing seemed out of place. It was such a great idea from a tourism perspective, kudos to the ministry that handled that!

There were so many people bustling about and I soon learned that the cruise ships drop tourists off right on the shore near here and they all stream in to here to shop and get food and so on. Genius! If only the Trinidadian authorities were just a fraction this innovative, I thought to myself.

The beautiful colors of the store fronts were accompanied by breathtaking and just as vibrant art that further conveyed the spirit of Curaçao. All of this was just upon the first view on entering the fort/ mall! But before we explored and shopped away, we decided to explore the fort first and headed toward the stairs at the entrance.

In the corner near the stairs was a quaint but fancy looking restaurant hidden away as people walking in passing it by. It looked so cool and was well designed yet still did not seem out of place. We headed towards the stairs and ascended to see the views the fort had to offer.

Upstairs, there was this large terrace where I imagined there were more canons back in the day. The sun came down very harshly up here so we moved quickly to see what we could see and get back down to the shopping!

We saw a magnificent panoramic view of the Willemstad and the pristine Caribbean blue waters below where the fort met the sea! It was such a magnificent flash of color. There was no sea breeze as one would expect at the seaside and the sun came very strongly!

Before coming down, we got a nice view of the entrance of the Fort/Mall from above. It was a great precursor as we would have a better idea of the layout before delving into the shopping!

We first entered a mini mart that had lots of snacks and drinks that we really needed on a hot humid day like this! It was green and well integrated into the walls of the fort as you would see. The cool AC was a much needed oasis and we spent way to long in there just looking around because it was so hot!

Here in an interior view and a great showcase of how the store was integrated with the fort! There was a great use of natural lighting. We went around the store taking in the local snack brands and drinks. We just love doing that in new countries!

I found this cannabis or weed energy drink in one of the chillers! This would probably be illegal in my country yet in this Dutch Caribbean island, there it was! I just had to take a picture to fool my parents that I was indulging in intoxicants as a crude joke! It was hilarious.

Our next stop was a candy store called Dushi Candy as we wanted to see what different types of candy we could get that was native to the island. It was so colorful and caught out eyes from a mile away. This photo above shows what it looked like.

The interior was just as colorful at the exterior if not even more! The design was definitely apt for a candy store with primary shapes and round edges. The first thing we saw was all the sweet dispensers loaded with varieties of chocolates and candies, most familiar and the others not so much!

We got our bags and started loading up with our favorites as well as trying new ones as well. I got some licorice medallions that looked like dutch coins and they were quite unorthodox tasting and very much an acquired taste even for someone like me who adores licorice! There were a few others but that was by far the most memorable.

We left the candy store and headed to the centre of the mall where there was a man playing the steel pan! Being from Trinidad and Tobago where the steel pan was invented, I was quite surprised to see it all the way here in Curaçao! The man played beautifully as the people had their lunches and drinks.

This is another view of the center of the mall which I want to call a piazza that seemed to have a restaurant and nice big shady umbrellas. There was a couple there dancing and having such a great time while others were clapping and cheering them on! It was such great vibes and a lively atmosphere.

Our next stop in the scorching sun was the ice cream shop right there were the man was playing the steel pan. We wanted to see what local flavors were on for sale and other new things we could discover. I think by now you would realize we are mostly interesting in food as it gives a good idea of the locals and their culture!

It a nice and quaint icecream shop that used it space wisely for little cute seating on the side. The photo above shows the first view we saw with patrons choosing their product and ice cream flavors.

The menu was well populated with many some familiar flavors but more of the unfamiliar ones. This got us excited! There were also the option to get some spiked smoothies and so on as well a affogatos which is just ice cream with and espresso shot poured over it.

I got an apple butter cinnamon flavor (one I never heard of tasted of) while my wife got the mango sorbet for an added refreshing level. Mines tasted like an apple jacks flavored ice cream and it was delicious!

It was only after we sat down near the window that we saw they were making their own waffle cones from scratch! How could we have missed this! It was right by the entrance!

After we exited the ice cream shop, we explored the rest of the fort and its high end stores. All around there were tourists that were all running away from the sun just like us!

There was this large old lady who literally looked like she had enough of walking in the sun and just shut down on a bench. I felt so sorry for her as she was a lone. Once we lingered for a while and saw that she was okay, we moved on.

Moving on to the other part of the Mall outside of the fort, we had to walk through a very thick archway to the other side. Once there the view was magnificent and a huge amount of colors that hit you in the face!

There were even more canons that were alarmingly thick and huge, larger than any I had ever seen before. Behind them was this beautiful fountain in a courtyard with buildings that were just as colorful as those we saw before the fort all with even more higher end shopping stores. My wife went crazy!

This is a view of the fountain and the courtyard. All the brand name stores that you could think about were here! We took our time walking around, window shopped and even got a few things that were at very good prices even if we were to purchase them online.

At the end of the all the stores there was a Starbucks which is basically our go to at home and we were so relieved to have found one at the end of our shopping journey! You can see from the gif how long the boulevard was and you can have an idea of how many stores there were so we were parched and thirsty!

You can imagine how we felt as we had to walk wall the way back through the boulevard, then through the fort again then all the way over the bridge then through the city to get to our rented car! We seemed to have gotten carried away! So we got a cold starbucks refresher (as seen in hand) to walk all the way back and keep us cool. Thanks for coming along! I still have to post our adventures while exploring Willemstad streets by foot! Stay tuned! Cheers!