Saturday 11th April
Willemstad, Curacao
We are now in the Caribbean and have stopped at the island of Curacao. This was until 2010 part of the Netherlands Antilles but is now an independent country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The walk from the ship to the town takes you through the Rif Fort which today is full of bars and shops. Willemstad is full of brightly painted buildings and is split into two parts by St. Anna Bay - the Otrabanda and the Punda districts. As it was Saturday the town was full of markets stalls and very busy. We crossed the bay by the Queen Emma Bridge - a floating bridge. It was very windy today and the water was quite rough so the bridge moved about and creaked a bit. We wandered about the Punda district on the other side of the waterway. The clock in the photo was on that side of the town. It rang just one bell for the half hour so we decided to return later to hear what happened on the hour. After looking around the area We stopped at a bar with friends to have a cool drink. When we came to cross back on the bridge we found that it had opened fully to let ships in. This meant that we had to get the ferry back to the Otrabanda side. After lunch we went back over the bridge to see what the clock did on the hour. We just made it for 2 o'clock - a bell struck two followed by all the bells playing 'Moon River' and some small Caribbean figures appearing just under the bells. I was glad we came in time to see it. We wandered a bit more and did some shopping before returning to the ship.