Wandering Around Willemstad: Visiting Curaçao on a layover

Today I had a four hour layover in Curacao, so I decided to take advantage of it, grab a bus, and wander around downtown Willemstad or as they call it, Otrobanda. It’s an old town and it has lots of beautiful streets and buildings, plus the bridges. It was a nice place to visit for an hour. It’s about five miles from the airport and I took a large public bus down there for $1. I took a smaller bus coming back and it cost $2. The smaller buses run more frequently and got me back to the airport at my preferred time.

Never having been in Willemstad I thought I would take some video to show you what it looked like.

Also a quick video of the Queen Emma Swinging Bridge opening for a ferry. It was quite disturbing at first as the bridge floats and I was halfway across when they started up a siren announcing the bridge was going to swing. Apparently they didn’t care if people were on the bridge as it swung.

And here are some pics I took downtown.

Overall it was a pleasant day and I felt very welcomed by the people of Curaçao. They were warm and helpful. Not everybody spoke English but I’m supposed to be practicing my Spanish anyway. Plus there were plenty of people who did speak English and they tended to go out of their way to help me.