I'd forgotten how much I liked this island. I was last here about four years ago, but the sight of the sherbet-colored colonial merchant houses lining the waterfront in the capital of Willemstad brought it all back. Before the CTO conference held me captive in the World Trade Center meeting rooms, I got out and about.

Here's the thing about Willemstad: It's a very walkable capital city, with the Punda neighborhood on one side of the canal and Otrobanda on the other. A tour guide told me to picture the shape of Curacao as a bikini top with Willemstad in the middle, the left side as the more rural countryside part of Curacao and the right as the residential and commercial section.

I heard "bon bini" (the Papiamento word for "welcome") uttered more often than I heard "good morning" as I strolled the Floating Market along the waterfront, snapping photos of freshly caught grouper and snapper still flapping in the fishing boats.

Read the full story, originally published on October 22, 2015, on Travel Weekly.