Curaçao – Cure-a-sow (like the female pig, not planting crops) – UNESCO site

So the first thing you need to know about Curaçao is how to pronounce it, which I put in the title so you start doing it the right way from the beginning and don’t have to relearn it like I did. 🙂

On the desert (but not deserted) island of Curaçao, you can use U.S. dollars everywhere.  The desert-like state of most of the island is the reason we have Curacao liquor.  The Dutch liked orange liquors, and when they were on the island they found the Laraha orange, a very small tart orange, and made their orange liquor out of it.  That liquor is now called Curacao and is well-known around the world.

This is a Caribbean island originally inhabited by the Arawaks that is now a Dutch island. The island is very colorful, due to the Dutch again.  They loved colorful buildings so the main city of Willemstad has buildings of all colors. It doesn’t (and didn’t) have gold, but was originally desirable as a natural port location in the Caribbean.
Cruise ships dock at Willemstad, and the City Center there is a UNESCO site partially because of the colored buildings, so when we went we spent much of the day wandering the area.

On the way to the town, you first walk through a fort converted into a shipping mall, which is quite an interesting transformation. This area is called Otrabanda and has the requisite Diamonds International, Cariloha, Little Switzerland, and Del Sol, ready to take your money as one would expect. It also thankfully has restaurants, coffee shops, and bathrooms.
Then you see many old, colorful buildings across the river, in the Punda section.  To get to the other side, you walk over the Queen Emma Floating bridge, which swivels out of the way to let ships go by (after the bridge attendants get everyone off it, which can take a fair amount of time). Also on the Punda side is Fort Amsterdam.