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Memories of Curaçao 2023

Week long vacation to Curacao where I did my first time dive and ate lots of food.

Steven I

11 Nov 2023 • 5 min read

We travelled with our friends Jon and Jerome and it was absolutely lovely. First time travelling together and I suspect it won’t be the last. We all share a love of easy vacations with lots of cheese and trips to the Dutch grocery store Van Den Tweel.

Food

Ceviche 91

I think the others appreciated this restaurant more than I did. I really enjoyed the Ceviche, which says a lot because I’m not huge into the seafood. But the rest of the food was good but not memorable.

Hemingway

Fantastically picturesque location but the food left much to be desired. If you like crispy bacon on your hamburger and a good bun… don’t order the Burger Deluxe.

Serafina

I enjoyed my burata, but my shrimp was like rubber.

Our travel partner Jerome had some thoughts to contribute:

I ordered the fettuccine with shrimp and burrata. Firstly, I was served spaghetti instead of fettuccine and clearly it was dried and not fresh pasta. The pasta was cooked appropriately but was completely under seasoned as though they forgot to salt the water whatsoever. The burrata was included as an ingredient but there was less than a tablespoon of the cheese. The shrimp was completely overcooked and chopped into small pieces so they were like little bullets. The grape tomatoes that were cooked into the dish were not peeled leaving an unpleasant fibrous skin that I had to spit out. The flavour of the sauce was butter and garlic which thankfully was as expected. Overall the dish was completely under seasoned so I had to ask multiple times to get salt to make this dish palatable. I wasn’t offered any fresh parmesan nor black pepper which would be expected from any decent Italian restaurant. They also served room temperature (warm) bottled water and I had to ask for ice.

- Jerome

Op=Op

Never disappointed! This is my 5th time eating ribs or schnitzel here and I will always come back to Curaçao and hit this restaurant. I was quite happy I didn’t get the meat sweats this trip. The service can be a bit slow when they are busy, but just enjoy the cool breeze and the anticipation of fall-off-the-bone ribs. And yes, we went twice this trip.

Kome

Top notch. Service was great, food was great, and so was the ambiance. We went near the end of the trip so the bowl of sweet and spicy brussel sprouts as an appetizer was much needed for my belly.

Batik Asli

My first experience of an Indonesian Rice table, it was fantastic! Even though the older Dutch gentleman asked us four men twice where our “ladies” were and if we had left them at home.

Activities

Jon and Jerome encouraged me to get my scuba certification and so this trip I did three dives. Curaçao has shore diving where no boat is required. It was pretty fantastic and I love the serenity of diving. Maybe it is the only way I can now get completely relaxed… long haul plane trips used to be my time to detach, but now that there is wifi… the only place to go is under water where there is no service.

Scuba

Three dives over three days with Dive Center Pietermaai. One was from our private condo beach and two were during a day trip to Westpunt, the western point of the island. It was great, relaxing, and a good time to try out my new tech. I will be making a separate post for scuba to document my scuba experiences.

Beach

We did one day trip up to Grote Knip which was absolutely lovely. And we had a surprise guest, a big pig that was peeing into the surf as we came out of the water. I do recommend some footwear getting in and out of the water because there is a strip of rocks that can be uncomfortable on one’s delicate feet.

Tech

Drone

This trip I took a DJI Mini 4 Pro for its maiden voyage. It was fantastic and really held up well in the wind but I was able to get some amazing footage. I‘ll be editing my videos and putting them on here soon.

Insta360 Camera

I purchased the Insta360 with Dive Kit for this trip and geez, it didn’t disappoint. The footage I got was amazing… although I have heard that no one ever wants to look at videos or photos of fish, but I am going to really enjoy the videos it took of us scuba diving. I will be posting those on here soon.

If you want to view my 360 diving videos of this trip, click here. It's even better if you have a VR headset!

Randomness

There is a really big pink pig in a yard by Boulevard Market to the south of Willemstad. What a strange sight to see as you drive by.

Wasabi cheese isn’t bad. I was very hesitant at first.

We have determined that it is a worldwide issue that ice cream machines at McDonald’s are consistently broken. At least one of us got our Blackberry Caramel Waffle McFlurry. It was good, but I think the waffle was just broken bits of cone.

An oil rig was doing something at shore and it was really cool to see. I didn’t dare drive the drone too close, but I really wanted to.

Mayo on everything. And you never have to ask for Mayo, but you may have to ask for ketchup.

My relax music was 1989 (Taylor’s Version) and it was perfect to silently sing to while enjoying the heat under a palapa.