20220907 Royal Caribbean Explorer of the Seas ABC cruise - Day 5 of 8 - Willemstad, Curaçao - VOOM - the worst internet at sea

Royal Caribbean Explorer of the Seas ABC cruise - Day 5 of 8

Willemstad, Curaçao

Today found us docked in Willemstad the capital city of the island of Curaçao, part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

I'd love to try to share photos and happenings from the day, but Royal Caribbean's absolutely horrifically bad VOOM internet service is once again failing continuously.  It is so bad that I cannot even load a single 90-kilobyte photo to this blog.  I will try to update it again tomorrow, but wow - I will be asking for my money back for this horrible service at the end of this cruise.

***I finally got photos to load***

After failing miserably at trivia this morning, we walked into Willemstad to do a little shopping. The first three are the view from our balcony.

You can see the Dutch influence

By Breitling in front of the Breitling street clock

There are a lot of beautiful murals and street art scattered around

Dushi has a lot of meanings…but it mostly means sweet, nice, or good

The Queen Anne bridge was open so we took the ferry

Afterward, we came back to the ship for a quick lunch and changed into swimwear ahead of our 2:15pm departure for a turtle swim and beach hop experience.

We headed to our first stop - Sabana Westpunt beach on the northwest corner of the island - a beach with several resident turtles as well as other fish.  

After our turtle encounter, we got back on the bus and headed to Cas Abao Beach.

We snorkeled for nearly an hour.  Somehow, Arlona had a banana and the fish absolutely loved it. We saw tons of fish and it was a nice snorkeling experience.

There is some potential that Arlona smuggled a banana to feed the fish...

You be the judge of whether the banana worked

On our ride back to the ship, the bus detoured to the former salt flats where flamingos visit.  They fly over from Bonaire regularly.

Once back to the ship, we showered and hit the Windjammer buffet for dinner, since we missed our assigned dining time.  A bit hit was dessert - freshly made crepes with your choice of toppings.

We also caught a nice post-sunset sky and a cool view of Willemstad as we sailed away for Aruba.

It was a good day with a frustrating end, thanks to Royal's awful internet.  Given the performance so far, I'll post what I can for the next few days and will update once we're home with real internet.