CARIBBEAN | CURAÇAO
Why Curaçao keeps calling me back
I went to Curaçao to celebrate my 50th birthday with my family. I came home with a new favorite Caribbean island. Here's what I loved, what surprised me and why I think Curaçao is worth considering for your own Caribbean vacation.
HOW WE ENDED UP HERE
I wasn't actually looking for Curaçao.
When I started planning my 50th birthday trip, I was looking at Aruba. Friends of ours had been and loved it, and honestly, that was about the extent of what I knew about the ABC islands at the time.
But traveling as a family of four with two adult children changes the math pretty quickly. Once I started pricing Aruba and looking for accommodations that would give all four of us enough space, it was more than I wanted to spend.
So I started looking at the other islands nearby, and that's how I found Curaçao.
The pricing immediately caught my attention, but I had one big hesitation: Curaçao wasn't really an all-inclusive island. At the time, I was convinced we needed an all-inclusive. A resort where everything was right there just seemed easier.
Then I found Avila Beach Hotel.
Two beautiful private beaches immediately checked one box. But what really made it work for us was the accommodation. Finding three bedrooms in the Caribbean isn't easy, and Avila had apartment-style options that gave us the space we needed while still feeling like we were staying at a beautiful Caribbean resort.
The more I researched the hotel and the island around it, the less concerned I became about not having an all-inclusive.
By the time I booked it, Curaçao no longer felt like the less-expensive alternative to Aruba. It felt like the destination that actually fit us better.
I thought we'd miss the all-inclusive. We didn't.
One of my biggest concerns about Curaçao was that we weren't staying at an all-inclusive. I pictured us waking up every morning and immediately having to figure out where to find coffee and breakfast, then doing the same thing again every time someone wanted a drink or something to eat.
Avila made that much easier than I expected.
We booked daily breakfast as part of our stay, so mornings were simple. We could wake up, get coffee and eat without having to get dressed and head out somewhere first thing. Our apartment-style accommodations also had a small kitchenette and refrigerator, which gave us another option.
Before the trip, I'd found a local market that delivered to the hotel. We ordered drinks, including alcohol and mixers, along with snacks and things we could have for lunch. Suddenly, we had most of the convenience I thought we needed from an all-inclusive, without actually being at one.
And it turned out that having to leave the resort for dinner wasn't an inconvenience at all.
It became one of my favorite parts of the trip.
Curaçao gave us a reason to go out for dinner.
The restaurants at Avila were fine, but the meals we had away from the resort were on another level.
We started at Soi95, where dinner turned into amazing cocktails and a table full of small plates. My son still talks about the duck. Then there was Kome, another small-plate adventure and one I'd specifically plan for a Wednesday. The food was memorable, but this is the restaurant where we still talk about the drinks. Serafina gave us something completely different: a more elevated Italian dinner and another reminder that eating well in Curaçao wasn't something we had to work around. It was part of experiencing the island.
EATING GLUTEN-FREE IN CURAÇAO
As someone who travels gluten-free, restaurants are something I research before a trip. Curaçao made that remarkably easy.
The restaurant menus we looked at clearly identified gluten-free options, which meant I could review menus before deciding where we wanted to eat. We chose our restaurants day by day because that worked best for our family, although we easily could have made reservations in advance. I never struggled to find somewhere I could eat. Most restaurants had several options, the wait staff understood what I needed, and I didn't have any issues during the trip.
That made exploring Curaçao's restaurant scene feel easy rather than something I had to carefully manage around a dietary restriction.
By the end of the trip, the thing I'd been worried about before we left, not having an all-inclusive, had become one of the reasons I liked Curaçao so much.
Not having every meal included gave us a reason to experience more of the island.
Why Curaçao keeps calling me back
We didn't spend this trip trying to see everything Curaçao had to offer. In fact, we did very little, and that was exactly what we wanted.
Most days were spent at the beach. We gave ourselves one day to wander around Willemstad, poke into shops, have lunch and stop for afternoon cocktails. There was no sightseeing checklist and no pressure to squeeze more into the trip.
What surprised me was how well Curaçao gave us both things. We could completely relax at Avila, but when we wanted to go somewhere, eat somewhere incredible or simply experience a little more of the island, it was there.
I'd go back differently next time. I'd still protect plenty of time for the beach, but I'd explore more of the island too. There is a lot of Curaçao we haven't seen yet. Maybe that's part of why it keeps calling me back.
Curaçao wasn't the island I was looking for. It turned out to be the island that fit us.