On my first day here, after a tasty but pricey bowl of tomato soup in a hotel restaurant with a delightful harbour view, I decided to look for less expensive meal options. Next day I chose a more local looking café. I had just started eating my styrofoam box of the day's special when a black hen and two half grown chicks wandered through the open air seating area. I thought of my mother who loved her chickens but would never have dreamed of allowing them in the house. I decided to keep looking for other possibilities for future meals.
Little black hen checks out the diners in a local café.
If there is a menu here it might be in Dutch, English or Papiamentu, a local Creole language that is a mixture of Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, English and French with some Arawak Indian and African influences. Similarly the servers might speak any or all of these languages as well as Spanish.
English menu in a tourist area.
There are some local foods I knew for sure I would not be trying, such as anything with goat in it. I also learned that iguana is traditionally eaten, one way being in soup. I have seen very few vegetarian options.
This restaurant was on the street where I stayed.
Although I ate in various restaurants the one I visited most often was on the street where I stayed. It was handy when I was too tired after a day of exploration to go further afield. On Monday there were several fish choices and the young woman who runs the restaurant said they had caught the fish the day before from their own boat.
Chicken roti from 5 Fingers.
I did eat at a few more places with atmosphere such as the charming Mundo Bizarro restaurant and an outdoor café along the waterfront. Breakfast foods came from a local supermarket where I was also pleased to find the almond biscuits I had discovered in the Netherlands.
The Mundo Bizarro restaurant has plenty of atmosphere.
The zucchini soup was delicious at Mundo Bizarro.
Paying for a meal or anything else is nearly as confusing as the mix of languages. The currency of Curaçao is the Netherlands Antillean guilder (also called the florin), abbreviated NAFl or ANG. It is pegged to the US dollar at a stable rate of US$ 1 = NAFl 1.77. American dollars are accepted but the change will usually come in guilders. Rather challenging mental arithmetic!
Netherlands Antillean 25 guilder note & coins, 1 guilder, 25, 5 & 1 cent.
Netherlands Antillean paper money is available in 10, 25, 50 and 100 guilder notes. Coins are 1, 5, 10, 25 and 50 cents plus 1 and 5 guilders. The 1 guilder coin is the size of a Canadian or American quarter and one cent is the smallest coin I have ever seen.
Dutch almond biscuit is a treat with afternoon tea.
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