A free streetcar, and the top deck is the good bit

The trolley runs along Main Street through the middle of downtown Oranjestad, from the cruise terminal area up toward Plaza Daniel Leo and back. It is one of the very few streetcar systems anywhere in the Caribbean, and it costs nothing to ride.

You can hop on and off along the route, which makes it a useful way to break up a shopping street with a small child who has run out of enthusiasm for shopping streets. The double-decker cars have an open upper deck, and getting a seat up top is the entire point as far as any child is concerned, so let the first trolley go if it is a single-decker and wait for the next one.

The one thing to know before you plan around it: the trolley does not run on Sundays. If your day in town is a Sunday, downtown will also be much quieter generally.

Fort Zoutman and the Historical Museum are a two-minute walk off the route, and the bakeries along the way are the natural place to try a pastechi. That is a genuinely good, cheap, low-effort morning.