WILLEMSTAD, Curacao — We used to meet friends regularly at an Indonesian restaurant to share a dish called “rijsttafel” until we became geographically undesirable…and the restaurant 
closed.
Fast forward to this Caribbean island that’s closer to South America than North. With its Dutch Indonesian heritage, vowed one of us, there has to be a Curacao restaurant that serves rijsttafel. She is on a mission and since the Carnival Freedom isn’t departing until late evening…rijsttafel for dinner it must be!
And it was.
The restaurant (Tempo Doeloe) was a short ride, we are told, and too far to walk. By the time the dinner bell was going to ring, we’d already walked enough of the streets of Willemstad to hail a welcome cab. We’d been coached on negotiating the fare.
“How much to Tempo Doeloe?”
“Fifteen dollars.”
“How about ten?”
“How about thirteen…and a two-dollar tip?”
We admired the creativity. Fifteen dollars and 20 minutes later, we were the restaurant’s first customers, and only rijsttafel customers. The dinner — it means “rice table” by the way — is 15 dishes that you choose from the elaborate 
menu. The servings are small, but a 15-dish meal is still a 15-dish meal and, to make matters more challenging, we ordered a 16th.
Dinner was $34 each, including taxes and tips. It was what we’d remembered from the 
last time we had rijsttafel with friends, maybe even better, perhaps because it was enhanced by a southern view of the Caribbean Sea, albeit under an overcast sky. Many of the dishes were meaty, many accompanied by rice and few that we knew how to pronounce — sambel goring oedang, daging smoor, sayer laden, nasi goring — and we couldn’t get through everything, of course.
That meant we weren’t entitled to dessert (family rules)…except that it was included.
Fried bananas, just like the old days.
After returning to the Freedom in a cab ($13 and a $2 tip) and sending appropriate photos to our friends in North America, we were severely chastised for not inviting them but this time we had the perfect excuse.
We were even more geographically undesirable.
Today at portsandbows.com: The latest in cruise news
Royal Caribbean Vision of the Seas
7 nights
January 24, 2015
Tampa (return): Roatan, Belize, Costa Maya, Cozumel
Inside: $554
Cost per day: $79
www.royalcaribbean.com