"November 1, 2005 - Willemstad arrival" Curaçao Travelogue by grandmaR

Magic Scissor's Lady's cut-out

At dinner I had peach compote, Bouillabaisse, and coq-au-vin, with the Raspberry cheese cake parfait for dessert. The cheese cake parfait, and the coq au vin were part of the Cooking Light (Tm) selections. That apparently is a magazine which specializes in those types of recipes. At dinner, we sat with the lady who was the magic scissors lady - she cuts little paper cutouts while you wait. Her husband was one of the lecturers and his topic was Pirates of the Caribbean. Our waiter (Isaac) wanted us to fill out the comment card, and he wanted to see what we had written. We did fill it out, but wouldn't show it to him.

Then after dinner, we went to see Gerry the Irish comedienne. She calls her husband (and straight man) "Horizontal". It was hilarious. The kids on board all dressed up (as did some of the adults) and went trick or treating. A little old lady got a long straight black wig and wore bell bottoms and went as Cher if she hadn't had plastic surgery. The cruise director was GI Joe.

Afterwards we had the trivia and we had the best score of anyone there - 14 out of 20 correct. We missed the country nearest to Cape Horn although I tried to tell them that the cape that was nearest to South Africa was Cape of Good Hope. They also asked what artificial organ a specific man had invented and it was the kidney although almost everyone said heart, and one of the players who was a doctor said that the kidney dialysis machine (which was what the guy invented) wasn't an artificial organ but a machine.

Ship from the Queen Juliana Bridge

The ship was to be in port by 7 and we woke up and looked at the bow camera on the TV about 6:30. It was still pretty dark, but we saw the lights of an oil refinery (top photo) in front of us. What were we doing? Apparently we were turning around. Then we went under the Queen Juliana Bridge (the high fixed bridge) and docked facing out. There were no other ships in this port with us.

Bob's breakfast

The tour we were to go on this morning (Nov 1) was the Willemstad Trolley tour. Originally I had booked us on the snorkeling tour for Caracas Bay, but canceled Bob's part of that and just had me snorkeling, and him taking the trolley. However, they canceled the snorkeling tour, so I switched my ticket to ride the trolley with him. Only problem was that the tour began at 8:20. So we had to get a move on.

Trolley going across the Queen Juliana Bridge

When we went up to eat at about 0720, the buffet area was quite busy (no tables to sit inside), so we ate outside by the pool and could see the bridge from the ship. While we were eating, we saw the trolley go across the bridge to the other side.

Bob looking at the bunkering operation

We'd had an announcement in the daily bulletin that the Queen Emma pontoon bridge was out of service for reconditioning, so I couldn't take any pictures of that which was a disappointment, but I took some pictures of the fixed bridge from the deck. We were told that because of high winds and traffic, no one was allowed to walk across the bridge. Bob thought it was because they didn't want people to jump. I also took pictures of our side of the town (the Outre Bunde)

Bunkering (fueling) the ship

While we were eating, there was an announcement from the bridge that we were taking on fuel (bunkering) and the activities would be restricted in some way (but we couldn't understand the announcement as to what that was) on deck 7 which was where we were. We soon saw that the deck walkers weren't allowed to walk all the way around the deck but had to turn back and go the other direction on the dock side of the ship. Bob thought that was kind of silly, since it was diesel fuel which is not flammable.

Bob on the tour trolley

Next: Willemstad Trolley tour