Day 11 ~ Curaçao
Tuesday, May 3
Curaçao lives up its billing: It’s clean and colorful, and our guide, Eveline Van Arkel, is as fashionably attired as predicted. She leads six of us through the old fort – built of deteriorating coral and limestone and now converted to a shopping mall – and then across the Queen Emma Bridge (1888) to Punda, the older half of the city.
The official government buildings are mustard yellow (the pigment is cheap and less likely to fade) but with the traditional Dutch gables. The story about a former governor ordering the white buildings painted in pastels to prevent migraines is apparently true, although our guide tells us he also happened to own stock in a paint company. But it works: I make it through the day without a Zomig!
Curaçao lives up its billing: It’s clean and colorful, and our guide, Eveline Van Arkel, is as fashionably attired as predicted. She leads six of us through the old fort – built of deteriorating coral and limestone and now converted to a shopping mall – and then across the Queen Emma Bridge (1888) to Punda, the older half of the city.
The official government buildings are mustard yellow (the pigment is cheap and less likely to fade) but with the traditional Dutch gables. The story about a former governor ordering the white buildings painted in pastels to prevent migraines is apparently true, although our guide tells us he also happened to own stock in a paint company. But it works: I make it through the day without a Zomig!
While we are standing in the parking lot outside Parliament, the prime minister wanders out, waves at us and gets into his car 6 feet away. Security, apparently, is a bit more lax in the islands.
(Check out Snookie's slide show below.)
We walk through the Jewish sector and past the old synagogue (the one abandoned by the Reformed Jews is nicely restored on the exterior but now used as office space for the district attorney) and the Governor’s Palace.
There are also lots of shops (that Dutch penchant for money is not just a stereotype) and a floating market run by Venezuelans, who bring over boatloads of fruits and vegetables and cheeses for the locals. Not to mention the tourist essentials of tote bags, old license plates, magnets and – yes, Christmas ornaments. We add one more to the collection. (I’m also tempted to buy a banana: How can a ship in the Caribbean run out of bananas? It’s going to be a long trip home if somebody down there doesn’t do a little grocery shopping today.)
There are also lots of shops (that Dutch penchant for money is not just a stereotype) and a floating market run by Venezuelans, who bring over boatloads of fruits and vegetables and cheeses for the locals. Not to mention the tourist essentials of tote bags, old license plates, magnets and – yes, Christmas ornaments. We add one more to the collection. (I’m also tempted to buy a banana: How can a ship in the Caribbean run out of bananas? It’s going to be a long trip home if somebody down there doesn’t do a little grocery shopping today.)
Halfway through our tour, the old bridge turns – an orange flag means it will be open for a few minutes; a dark blue flag means it might be smart to get in line for the free ferry. The newer Queen Juliana Bridge (1974) looks vaguely like the Coronado bridge, but is too low for the new megaships to pass through. The Oasis need not apply.
On our own, we head off to the Kura Hulanda, a museum tracing the history of slavery. We’re increasingly silent as we walk through displays explaining how the Africans were captured and thrown into the holds of slave ships for the trip to the Caribbean. (The missionaries rode up top.) The trade triangle was a profitable one: Guns, steel and manacles are shipped from Europe to Africa; slaves fill the holds from Africa to the Caribbean; then molasses, sugar and rum back to Europe. We step into a reconstructed hold and see the narrow berths where slaves were crammed (sick ones are thrown overboard, their deaths meticulously recorded for Lloyds of London) and the manacles and chains used to keep them from escaping.
We are duly appalled at the horrors of the 18th and 19th century. Then we stroll into the next building and are stunned to see our own history on display: a Ku Klux Klan uniform, a section on lynching in the 1920s, the failure of the U.S. military to integrate for 80 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, and – inevitably – the rise of Malcolm X and the Black Panthers. There is also a photograph of Obama. Interestingly, I hadn’t made the race connection until now: We saw an Obama sticker on a car in St. Lucia without realizing how significant his election must be to the descendants of slaves. Sometimes you need to get away from your own history to understand it. Or, as it says on our ticket to the museum: “Let not woes of old enslave you anew.”
We are duly appalled at the horrors of the 18th and 19th century. Then we stroll into the next building and are stunned to see our own history on display: a Ku Klux Klan uniform, a section on lynching in the 1920s, the failure of the U.S. military to integrate for 80 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, and – inevitably – the rise of Malcolm X and the Black Panthers. There is also a photograph of Obama. Interestingly, I hadn’t made the race connection until now: We saw an Obama sticker on a car in St. Lucia without realizing how significant his election must be to the descendants of slaves. Sometimes you need to get away from your own history to understand it. Or, as it says on our ticket to the museum: “Let not woes of old enslave you anew.”
Speaking of woes of old . . . we smugly head off to the swing dance class, where they dare to make us learn something new! Flick, flick, and we darn near kick each other across the room. (And if I miss my mark by two inches, Snookie will be singing with the Vienna Boys Choir.) Not to mention the boogie walk and dreaded triple step. It’s like our first weeks of dance lessons all over again. Although this time, we are at least vaguely confident that we can actually master this skill.
After dinner and dancing we fall asleep to the sounds of the 70s singer-cum-karaoke-machine in the bar upstairs. Listening to him warble through “Rocky Mountain High” every night, I’m surprised I don’t have nightmares in which John Denver rises off the coast of Monterey like a phoenix.
After dinner and dancing we fall asleep to the sounds of the 70s singer-cum-karaoke-machine in the bar upstairs. Listening to him warble through “Rocky Mountain High” every night, I’m surprised I don’t have nightmares in which John Denver rises off the coast of Monterey like a phoenix.
Sail on to Day 12
