Thankful Thursday: Curacao wrap up edition

I'll be back tomorrow to talk more about Christmas and all. In the meantime, here's a bit of a wrap up of things I'm thankful for related to our trip to Curacao...(in no particular order)...

1. Time together. Obviously, we all live together right now and spend plenty of time together. But, in our day to day life, it's easy to get distracted and stay busy doing our own things. During our trip, we had plenty of down time for actual conversations. I particularly enjoyed the debates about the rankings of things like Marvel movies and vegetables. :) 

2. Age of boys. Just like all the parents who tell you to cherish your kids when they're little, I'm well aware of the time. I'm actively appreciating the age my boys are now. They're all pretty much independent (two have lived on their own and one desperately wants to) so traveling together is definitely easier than when they were younger. They're old enough, too, that we can split up when we're traveling...it doesn't have to be all of us doing an activity or going to a site. It's lovely, really. 

3. Getting home when we did. Even though we had some travel inconveniences, we'll take that. We're incredibly thankful that we got home when we did and recognize that ours were just inconveniences, not problems. So glad to have made it home before the extreme weather and travel messes across the country.  

4. Toilet paper in the US. Maybe I'm spoiled. Maybe I haven't traveled enough. Either way, I'm thankful for toilet paper here in the US. So far all of the other countries I've visited have had less nice toilet paper. It's definitely not a deal breaker or anything. I'm just saying...I'm thankful for the toilet paper here at home.

5. Air conditioning, low humidity. I enjoy time at the beach and warm weather during winter. Definitely. I also, though, very much appreciate things like air conditioning and lower humidity. Yup. Even though it's considerably easier to pack for warm weather vacations, I may actually prefer cooler weather most of the time...or at least I want my warm weather to go with dry conditions rather than humid. ;) 

6. Pokemon. Okay, this one seems odd, right? During our trip, we learned that Micah has shockingly little knowledge about animals in general...and what he does "know" seems to come from Pokemon, lol. It made for some interesting and hilarious comments.

7. People who speak English. I've said it before but I'll say it again. Thank you to the millions (billions?) of people who speak English. I'm so grateful to be able to enjoy and participate in more cultures despite only speaking English. 

8. Facebook groups and Pinterest. I'm a planner. If you know me, you know this. Ahead of the trips we take, I do a good bit of research. Facebook groups and Pinterest are my friends. Thankful that these things exist and enable me to learn more about a place before we get there so that we can do our best to make the most of our time. Heck, even while we were in Curacao I was able to post to the Curacao Visitors Forum group to ask for recommendations on where to watch the World Cup final game. The responses were almost immediate and quite helpful. :)

9. Tropical cocktails. Yup, I ordered a number of fun cocktails while we were in Curacao. Sometimes I knew what was in them, sometimes I didn't. (Literally, on the catamaran, I told the guy to just surprise me a couple times, lol.) We'd have loved to bring back some authentic Curacao actually from Curacao but opted not to bring back any liquor, having heard some horror stories of dealing with customs in Miami. Thanks to our distillery tour, though, we do know how to verify the genuine product here in the states. Maybe I'll learn how to mix my own cocktails. :) 

10. The ability to travel. Overall, too, I'm so incredibly thankful that we're in a position to be able to travel. We're tremendously blessed and we know it.

Okay, that's it for now. It was a good trip. :) 

Curacao-Part 4

Okay, almost done! :) 

DAY 9 Sunday: Our last full day in Curacao found us heading to the Mambo Blvd area to The Green House. (I'd asked on a Curacao Visitor group on Facebook and received numerous recommendations and this place got the most votes.) We managed to snag one of the last tables and settled in to watch the World Cup finals. We ate and drank and cheered and had a great time enjoying the game alongside everyone else there watching...

Since the game went to overtime and penalty kicks, we had to hurry when we left there...and returned to the theater to watch Black Panther 2 and enjoy more air conditioning (and the cheaper movie tickets). (PSA: Watching a movie in English, that's subtitled in Spanish, means that when the movie actually speaks in Spanish, you don't get subtitles. Yeah. We're going to have to watch it again, lol.) 

We had dinner once again at Bayside Restaurant (with four of us ordering the karni stoba this time, lol) and played more Dutch Blitz before packing.

DAY 10 Monday: We finished packing and checked out about 10 and headed to the Ostrich Farm for the 11:00 tour. We didn't realize that there would be so many animals beyond ostrich...

Also, I didn't realize that peacocks liked to perch up high, lol. We saw peacocks, warthogs, iguanas, emus, and crocodiles. (There were also chickens...which seem to be for the crocodiles, lol.)

Anyhow. Our terrific tour guide drove us around the farm and taught us all kinds of things about ostrich (in both English and Dutch based on our tour group)...

...and let us all stand on an ostrich egg at the end to show how strong they are. (Also, tangent to say that multi-lingual people freakin' rock. I'm so very impressed by people who speak more than one language and so appreciative for everyone who makes my life easier by knowing English.) 

Toward the end of the tour, we also got to feed the ostriches...from a bowl and from your hand if you were brave enough... 

The boys declined the offer to feed the ostrich from their hands, and I didn't do it very well, lol. The ostrich are a bit aggressive and bit my fingers (fortunately, they don't have teeth), causing me to drop most of the food. Twice. :) 

(Note: I'd read ahead of time that we might be able to ride an ostrich and was looking forward to that. On account of how unpredictable, not smart and aggressive the ostrich are, though, they don't let you ride them these days, and I'm good with that.) 

After our tour, we enjoyed lunch there at their restaurant. Nathan and I had ostrich burgers. ;) 

We then drove down the road a bit and stopped briefly at the Aloe Plantation. Unfortunately, their tour times didn't line up with our schedule but we had a nice few minutes reading their information boards and such before continuing on to the airport.

We had plenty of time at the Curacao airport (we'd been told we should get there 3 hours before our flight but had more than enough time), flew to Miami and then endured the Miami airport for hours. Nathan, Asher and I already have Global Entry and TSA Precheck but Noah and Micah did not. We'd gotten them conditionally approved but they needed an enrollment on arrival interview to complete the process. (You can do the interviews at a number of airports--like the other three of us did--but the backlog on interviews was almost a year...so they asked people to do the interviews when they re-enter the country instead.) 

So, we waited more than an hour in the immigration/customs line as we were directed (they said the enrollment on arrival interview would be when we got in front of a person checking our passports). When we got to the booth, the man there (who was one of the few friendly people we encountered at the Miami airport) instructed us to go to a secure room and wait for another 60-90 minutes for the official interview. Fortunately, having been forewarned about the Miami airport, our flight home wasn't until the next day so we figured we'd just get it done. And the secure waiting room (which we weren't allowed to leave once we entered) had Shrek 2 on the tv so that was something, lol. (Course, it also had four employees sitting behind the desk discussing how to switch the tv to Monday night football for an hour rather than helping the line get done faster.) 

Anyhow. We finally got that done (all that waiting for two minutes of having their fingerprints taken), caught our shuttle to our hotel, got to our room before 11pm and crashed. It wasn't a lot of sleep but it was better than trying to sleep on a plane or in airport chairs. :) And then we got up and caught the 5am shuttle back to the airport. We happily said goodbye to Miami and made it home to Denver, found our van, grabbed some lunch and drove home. Whew.

So, that was our trip to Curacao! 

I'll be back later with some wrap up and such. I need to get back to finishing Christmas prep now. :) 

Curacao-Part 3

Lots more pictures still...

DAY 8 Saturday: Saturday was a bit of a lazy morning. (Sidenote: I find that trips with boys require more time for sleeping, lol.) We headed back into town to try to do a bit of souvenir shopping and got lunch at El Gordo Grill again (town was quieter with no cruise ships in port). Nathan also managed to watch the end of the World Cup third place game and I found a number of murals...

Yup, the artwork was impressive (and this is just a small sample...some I didn't get pictures of because it was dark and some we didn't make it to but I've seen in photos so know we missed them).

After that, we headed to the north end of the island to Shete Boka national park, which we enjoyed right up until their closing time at 4:30. We stopped at three of the bokas...pocket bays with waves pounding against coral rock formations...

The pictures really don't do justice to the awe and beauty.

From there, we drove to Playa Jeremi...a nice little beach south of Grote Knip (where we went on Tuesday). It was basically empty and we enjoyed some time there while Nathan snorkeled, I beachcombed, Noah photographed, Asher flipped, and Micah meditated. 

At sunset, we continued on and stopped at the Bahia Beach Restaurant overlooking Playa Lagun for dinner.

That top left photo is just a beach we stopped at along the way (Playa Kalki or Playa Piscado maybe??). We didn't even walk down but I thought it was pretty. :) Next is a cat Micah found at Playa Jeremi...my cocktail at dinner...Playa Lagun...and Asher and Micah enjoying the Christmas decoration at dinner. 

Okay...almost done...

Curacao-Part 2

Continuing...

DAY 5 Wednesday: We woke to rain and wind and decided to rearrange our plans (which turned out to be not entirely necessary...though the forecast said rain some days, it never rained past about 9 in the morning but we didn't know that then). We headed back to Willemstad and to Plasa Bieu for lunch. It's a market/cafeteria style place with multiple vendors and is where the locals eat so had been heavily recommended. We ended up too overwhelmed there (couldn't choose, lol) so ventured back toward the area we'd been before and found El Gordo Grill which was fabulous (large portions, great food, long line of locals). Yum.

At this point we realized that Micah hadn't taken his medication so drove back to our villa to do that. By then, the distillery tours for the day were sold out. (There were three huge cruise ships docked in Willemstad today and you could see the difference!) So, we played some pinochle then went to a nearby mall we'd discovered and watched Violent Night at the theater. It wasn't a great movie by any means but it was still fun...interesting to watch a movie in English but with subtitles and appreciated the air conditioning, lol. 

After that, we headed back to town and found Bario Urban Food in Otrobanda (literally "the other side"...the more residential district of Willemstad on the other side of the bridge). From our seats, we could see one of the huge cruise ships docked in the bay (it had to have gone through the Queen Emma bridge). And, I'm still not positive what was on the top of my yummy blue drink but it was delicious. 

We then walked back across the bridge for some gelato before heading home. 

DAY 6 Thursday: Those of us who were legal to drink in Curacao (meaning everyone except Micah...who would have been able to still join us but opted not to) headed out in the morning. We first scouted where we needed to go Friday morning (which was useful, as it wasn't entirely clear) and then continued on to the Landhuis Chobolobo distillery to learn all about Curacao liquor. It wasn't a complex tour but we learned some interesting things...like the ingredients and process for making Curacao, how to tell authentic Curacao from imitation products, and some of the back story about this distillery itself. Our tour included tastings of some of their products and also one cocktail per person, and we all enjoyed our awesome selections while we chatted with a lovely family from Virginia in our tour group. 

We followed that with lunch at a nearby place then went back to the villa for some games and downtime. We walked down to the beach hoping to catch the sunset but there was cloud cover. :( We then tried one of the other restaurants at the beach--the Bayside Restaurant--and thoroughly enjoyed a local dish called karni stoba.

On our walk back to our villa, one of the numerous stray cats started following us. Micah befriended it and named her Michael Jackson and desperately wanted to let her in and feed her and bring her home with us...

She was surprisingly persistent and pushed on our sliding doors trying to get inside for awhile. The instructions for our AirBNB, though, very clearly stated *not* to feed the stray cats or let them inside, so we obeyed. 

DAY 7 Friday: Friday was our main planned experience in Curacao...a snorkeling catamaran tour with BlueFinn Charters. We made it to our launch site on time and boarded the lovely catamaran in somewhat choppy waters. At our first stop, the crew extended a line with buoys and we all spaced ourselves out along it. Then the nearby aquarium brought out a couple of their dolphins to do some tricks and swim alongside us multiple times! 

We were strongly instructed not to touch the dolphins but some of us got grazed by the dolphins once or twice...they were that close! Many, many thanks to the awesome lady in the green swimsuit from Kansas who was on the line just in front of Micah!! She had a case for her phone and managed to get some photos and videos that she generously shared with us. (Also, hooray for iPhones and airdropping! We'd tried a couple different methods of taking underwater pictures when we went to Belize and decided this time not to bother.) In that last photo, that's actually Micah and I getting passed by the dolphin!

From there, we went to another couple snorkeling spots (Tugboat Beach and Caracas Bay??) and also had a delicious lunch that they grilled right there on the catamaran. We enjoyed the sunshine (thankfully, the choppy waters and overcast skies cleared up after the dolphin stop), lazing on the catamaran, being entertained by the crew (particularly Jorge...who sneaked into that first photo with us and loved to dance), doing flips off the side of the boat (well, just Asher), chatting with others onboard, and sailing around to drop off some people at their resort and the rest of us back at the launch site...

It was a fabulous day! (Did I mention, too, that the crew ran an open bar the entire time as well? Yay!) 

We stopped at the grocery store on our way to our villa, Nathan walked down to the Blue Bay beach to snorkel a bit more on his own and we just did sandwiches for dinner since everyone was pretty wiped. :)

Curacao-Part 1

For Christmas this year, we opted for time together (especially since we know we have a limited number of winter breaks left with all three boys). We went to Curacao...because of a combination of Micah's desire for some place warm, my desire to try to get to a new to us continent (Curacao is just north of Venezuela so is part of South America), and our preference for not too crowded or blatantly touristy places. It was good. :)

Thankfully, we made our plans far enough in advance that we knew Micah's finals would be over (thankful that they were relatively early!), and both older boys were able to request the time off when they first started their jobs in the fall. We were able to go early enough in December to avoid the bulk of the holiday travel rush and cost. And now we've been home a couple days and are mostly caught up. Whew.

I know people are wanting to hear about it and see pictures. Working on it... :)

Um, this will take a bit. If you don't want to read all the details (which I will record here for the sake of having it recorded), feel free to just browse the photos. There are plenty. 

DAYS 1 & 2 Saturday & Sunday: We finished our packing and got out the door on time then drove to a parking lot near the airport and caught the shuttle to the terminal, breezed through security and camped out near our gate while finding lunch and watching some of a World Cup game.

At this point, interject an annoying travel story...we'd originally booked a flight from Denver to Miami, a hotel near the airport to stay the night in Miami, and then a flight from Miami to Curacao. American Airlines changed our flight to Miami to have a short (less than an hour) connection through Dallas. While we were waiting at the gate, American announced a delay to our flight due to weather in Dallas. The gate attendant was rather rude and unhelpful, telling us that the connecting flight out of Dallas would "probably" also be delayed but unable to give any satisfactory information and unwilling to help people rearrange connections. (She flat out told everyone that she wouldn't help with connections and not to ask her after basically insulting us for asking for clarification on her initial, unclear announcement.) Unwilling to risk it and at the prompting of American Airlines' email and text messages, we used their app (as instructed) to rebook our flight to a direct flight from Denver to Miami leaving just after midnight and still arriving in time for our connection from Miami to Curacao. We cancelled our hotel room and accepted that we'd just try to sleep some on the flight. Somehow, though, in rebooking our Denver to Miami leg, American lost our Miami to Curacao leg...which was no longer showing up in our reservation. So. We went to a different gate attendant who was much more helpful then the one at our gate and managed to get the Miami to Curacao portion added back in. But. The system wouldn't allow us to re-check in for that flight (which we'd already done prior to all the changes) or get boarding passes and told us we'd need to see someone in Miami. Fine.

So, we hung out at the Denver airport for the afternoon and evening, finding ourselves a quiet spot, learning a new game that we'd brought with us (Dutch Blitz...on account of the fact that Curacao was a Dutch colony), and enjoying the food offerings in the C terminal before returning to the A terminal for our flight. (First four pictures below)

We arrived safely in Miami and found the gate and some of us crashed for a bit more. (We arrived in the 6am hour and were due to leave around noon.) We were very unimpressed by the Miami airport's level of cleanliness and service (and definitely appreciate Denver's airport even more now) and ended up also having to move to another terminal altogether when our flight got changed to a different gate. In the meantime, I tried to find someone to check us in...had to wait for staff to show up and then got redirected a couple times. I ended up at the American "service" desk...waiting forever and then finally getting to the counter only to have the woman chastise me for using the app, ignore me when I said that's what American told me to do and when I explained that we'd also gone to an actual attendant as she insisted we should have done, not say a kind word at all (or apologize for chastising me wrongly), take forever, but finally hand me new boarding passes (without so much as a "have a good day" or any parting words).

So. We finally boarded our plane and made it to Curacao, picked up our rental car, and found our AirBNB. Yay!! We settled in then walked down to the beach (2 minutes) to get some dinner at one of the restaurants there before crashing for the night.  

DAY 3 Monday: We got a slow start Monday as people needed extra sleep. Spent the morning and afternoon exploring our place (an AirBNB villa at the Blue Bay resort area...a gated area with villas, hotels and a golf course...that came with access to the beach and a pool along with the area's three restaurants)...

...and then we found the nearby grocery store for supplies and had lunch in our villa before heading into the capital (Willemstad) to explore there a bit. We found the main tourist area, the Queen Emma pedestrian bridge (which opens on a pivot to allow boats through) and plenty of Christmas decorations...

We had dinner there before heading back to our villa. Nathan and Asher took the snorkel gear stocked at our villa down to the pool to test things out, we played more Dutch Blitz, and we called it a day.

DAY 4 Tuesday: We managed to get an earlier start and headed out around 8:30. We stopped along the 40 minute drive to find some additional snorkel gear to supplement what was available at our villa and continued on to Grote Knip beach...and were in the water by 10:15. :) 

We'd gotten to the beach early enough to stake out a claim to some shade at the far end of the beach. We set up our stuff and Noah mostly stayed with it, taking pictures and preferring to stay dry for the day. Nathan and Asher set off to snorkel around the area (Micah having decided that snorkeling was not for him). Micah and I just enjoyed the gorgeous beach and people watching (he also did some limited bouldering at one point). And Asher discovered a spot for some cliff jumping...and jumped twice. Nathan joined him once. 

We left there about 1 and drove just north to eat at the Blue View Restaurant, which had a lovely view of Playa Forti and the restaurant on the opposite cliff where you could cliff jump down to the beach. (Our lunch entertainment was watching some people jump and some people chicken out, lol.) Though we'd thought we'd stop at more beaches, we decided to not overdo it so headed back to our villa for showers and some of us venturing down to the beach bar to watch some of the World Cup game. Nathan and I made a quick trip to the grocery store and we had a low key dinner in at our villa...baking up some "Big Americans" frozen pizzas because the name just made us laugh. We learned that using the oven in our villa in the tropical climate was not ideal, lol. While our bedrooms were thankfully air conditioned, the rest of the living area and kitchen in our villa (and most villas from what we could tell) were not. The lovely open porches and ceiling fans helped but we ended up keeping things closed up on account of the many, many bites we were getting. (Pretty sure it was a mix of mosquitoes and noseeums. We knew it was rainy season but had been told that it didn't generally make a difference...but, unfortunately, this year was more rainy than normal so there were more bugs. Sigh. Apparently, Micah is delicious (his words). Poor kid counted 40 bites just on his left foot at one point.)

Okay, that's already a lot. Much more to come...