What to do in Curacao in 9 hours during your cruise stop

On the 5th day of our Southern Caribbean cruise with Carnival, we stopped at Curacao at 1pm.

View from the ship

Curacao is an island of 444 square kms. It’s a Dutch colony with the capital Willemstad. You can see the Dutch style in architecture form the very first view – colorful buildings in typical style.

View on Curacao from the ship

When you live the ship, you can easily find information desks for all your questions.

Curacao welcome board

We had 9 hours to spend in Curacao, but as it was in November and already in the afternoon, we decided to take a taxi to the public beach.

Public beach with FREE shezlongs

We were pleasantly surprised by the clean and well-maintained beach area with free shezlongs, children’s playground on the sand.

Playground at the public beach

When it soon became dark, we noticed public swimming pool with the changing lights. What fun it was for my daughter to swim in there and observe change of colors! It was hard to get her out of the pool. Sure enough we’ve heard from her about this pool for a long time after our trip – it was her best memory from the whole cruise!

Changing lights in the public swiming pool

After returning to the place of our embarkation and still having free time in Curacao, we decided to walk along the bridge and to explore the area. Colorful bridge was in harmony with the Dutch styled buildings.

Lightened bridge

The tourist area was well kept. Small shops, cafe, people walking around, and surprisingly – free Wi-Fi in surrounding areas. You could see people with smart phones browsing close to the banks and restaurants.

We ended our stay with self- explanatory historical walking tour, where all the major historical facts of Curacao were reproduced on the boards along the cozy walk near the dock.

Great way to educate yourselves about Curacao

Lightened Carnival Breeze welcomed us back, reminding about next stop in our adventure: Aruba.

Lightened Carnival Breeze

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, and that doesn’t affect my personal and sincere opinion.