The hotel we stayed at had a sister hotel that held most of the amenities called “Klooster Hotel”. The person who worked the front desk at that hotel also works the front desk of the Boho Boutique Hotel. So when we had arrived yesterday to check in, we rang the ring doorbell and waited lady that worked the front desk of the Klooster to take the ~5 minute walk to get from the klooster to the Boho. The hotels are back to back with one street separating them.
The one thing I noticed about the Klooster is that it is a retrofitted monastery. So there are some beautiful stain glass and random statues everywhere. The eating area is in the middle of the courtyard (picture above). I tried the breakfast there, and it was average. I would say that homewood suites is way superior to the breakfast served here. There was some eggs and sausage, and make your own sandwich, cereal, and coffee, and they charged me $18 a person.
For our first full day, we decided to go to the most popular tourist beach “mambo beach”. We chose to go here first because looking at the cruise ship arrivals in curacao website, it showed no boats coming in today. So I wanted to go to a beach that had a lot of places to eat, and shop next to it because we were still trying to figure out curacao.
Mambo beach is a really nice tourist area beach. The sand is nice, and there are a bunch of shades and trees everywhere. The water does not go that deep (4-5 feet) up to the barrier and reminds me of waikiki beach. The one thing I found out about curacao, is that a lot of the beaches here have fees to. Which at least meant the beach was fairly clean and there were restrooms that you could use. Mambo beach cost $3 a person, and if i wanted to use a lounge chair and umbrella those cost $5 each.
How do they collect the money for the beach? It seems like around a certain time like 10-11 am. There is a person that walks around collecting the money for the beach access. While for using the lounge chairs, whichever restaurant/place put up the chair. A server from the restaurant went to all the lounge chairs at around 11:30am collecting the fees. Potentially, if you came later in the day, you might not have to pay, but there also might not be any chairs available either.
There are a lot of chairs set up throughout the beach, we sat farther back because we had a stroller, and it was not easy moving the stroller in.
You can see all the dutch influence on the menus. We sat at a place that had more bar food, and I had to figure out what everything was because I have never heard of those snacks before. I have no idea what a “Mexicano” is, I eventually asked a friend when I came back and he said it was a spicy meat sausage. I figured out the easiest way for me to try to figure out what something might be is just say everything outloud and it sounds a little more familiar. I saw “Loempia” and could tell it was some type of lumpia, or spring roll.
The weather in curacao is wonderful during the morning and late afternoon, during the middle of the afternoon it is so hot. I think it gets to around 90’s , while the rest of the day is low 80’s, with less humidity than an asian country. I think the humidity was only around 50-65% the entire time we were here. We took Naomi into the water, and played in the sand with her. The mistake I made was playing in the sand too long, because my sunscreen protection started to wear off, so my skin started to feel sensitive. I forget how strong the sun is in the caribbean during the middle of the day.
The above image was a mural we saw on a building as we were going for dinner.
Since we were flying from the west coast to the east coast, our sleep schedule got all messed up (4 hours ahead). Sherri and I were able to change our schedule easily, but Naomi sleep was all weird. She was napping from 5pm-7pm, which was her regular nap time at home (1pm-3pm).
Anyway, for dinner I had checked reddit (some redditor said it was affordable and family friendly) and then glanced on google maps to see the restaurant’s reviews. Looking at the restaurants next to that place, it was the only one that seemed to have the most delicious food based on my taste. I would not describe the place as being a family restaurant, but a more romantic/date place. However, because my goal was to try to eat at restaurants that were walking distance from our hotel (6 minute walk). I gave it a try.
To give some info on the restaurant, it is built in a house with walls made of corral, which gave it very nice texture. The house itself was converted mostly into a kitchen and food setup area. Also for our entire dinner, Naomi was sleeping so we just enjoyed a nice date night with her just sleeping next to us.
We didn’t have any reservations, so they sat us in the back. We ordered some curacao wine, and tried the following, appetizers – Sauteed Mushrooms (which was mushrooms with sweet potatoes and a yogurt ice cream on top of it), main course was a paella – which was not a traditional paella, it was their creative take on it. It came out looking like an omelette, but with rice instead of egg. Sherri thought it tasted delicious, and for my main dish I ordered the fisherman friend dish, which was a white fish with sweet potatoes and greens.
Then for dessert we had olive cake and ice cream. It was really good, and I think I have a craving for olives now.
With the time change still affecting us we ended up resting at home and washing some of our clothes. I brought some dry laundry sheets which you throw into a sink to wash clothes. This allowed us to minimize the amount of clothes we brought, because I didn’t want to carry too many luggages.
