Mr. & Mrs. Lemich: Curacao + Willemstad (Day 1-3)

We spent a fabulous week exploring the island of Curacao, staying at the Sunscape all inclusive resort, spa & casino with my parents. Mike and I actually planned the whole trip, which was the first time we planned an international vacation ourselves. Curacao is a small island in the Caribbean (one of the ABC islands with Aruba and Bonaire) which is just off the coast of Venezuela. The language of the island is Papiamentu which is a mixture of Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, French, and English. However most of the locals were fluent in 5-10 languages.

We used this trip as a celebration of Mike's graduation and our 2 year anniversary. I loved every minute of the island- the snorkeling, beach activities, swimming, and walking everywhere.

The vacation was more active than I had thought it would be. The first day went like this: woke up at 8:30 & ran a 5k (the treadmills were in km), then beach yoga, breakfast, water zumba, and 1 hour of snorkeling... all before lunch! We walked everywhere except for when we took a taxi to Willemstad.

A 5 minute walk from our hotel was Sea Aquarium Beach. Sea Aquarium beach was a public beach, which surprised me, because most public beaches (in the USA) are not very nice.

One thing that was super cool about this vacation, was that Americans were the minority. The majority of the tourists were from the Netherlands or South America. There were many people I thought were from the states, until they opened their mouth to talk.

We swam out to and jumped off of the rocks. There were tons of huge crabs on the rocks.

Many people also wore thongs and speedos, or at least super short European board shorts. Mike by far had the longest board shorts on the island.

Our hotel had 5 restaurants, 4 pools, 6 bars and a cafe. The restaurants were all out doors and one of the pools had a swim up bar. We drank a million virgin pina coladas and strawberry daiquiris. "Beach elegance" was the required attire for the restaurants after 7 pm.

The "desserts" on the island seemed like they had no butter or sugar in them. They almost tasted like nothing, it was very deceiving because it looked delicious. No wonder all the other countries are smaller than us. They did have delicious ice cream though. So we got ice-cream from the little shack like 2- 3 times a day.

The 3rd day we took a Taxi into Willemstad to explore the city. In the first shop I bought a Brazil Jersey for $12. It was funny because my dad told me not to buy it from the first place we stopped in because I would find one down the road for $8. I decided to buy it anyway bc I did not want to have to find the shop again. Sure enough, about an hour and half later, we saw a Brazil Jersey hanging in the window of a shop with a large $8 sticker on it. We died laughing that it was the exact amount my dad had said earlier. We had fun talking to a shop owner from India who was telling us about the people on the island. He told us that "the younger generation doesn't want to work, but everybody wants an iPhone." For the rest of the trip we ran around saying "everybody wants an iPhone" in indian accents.

World cup by day:

The whole town shut down and everyone made their way to cafes or bars to watch the game. Whenever a team would score, there would be a loud uproar of cheering. Whenever the tv picture or sound would temporarily go out, there would be a loud uproar of profanities. (Followed by cheering when the glitch had passed)

We watched the game at Plein Cafe Wilhelmina.