Take me down to Panama City...

Buenos dias! Herewith is the 2nd part of our family getaway to Panama...

We left Bocas on Tuesday, March 2 and headed to Central America's most cosmopolitan city...Panama City. My impression of Panama City before this visit was entirely created by 1989 footage of US troops invading to kick out Noriega. I vaguely remember some bulleted concrete walls and a fairly desolate looking place, as CNN presented it. I was in for a surprise.

Panama City is a bustling place with dozens of 20 to 40 story buildings, mostly white concrete apartment buildings but also several steel and glass skyscrapers. It is far bigger than San Jose (CR) and brought back many memories for me of my time in Hong Kong 20 years ago.

Downtown Panama City as Riley saw it (with a few missing teeh) from the Casco Viejo on a drizzly day.

Tara found a beautiful, funky, modern apartment to rent in a nice part of town called Bella Vista. And, the bonus is that our friends the Tuttons arrived in Panama City, from Costa Rica, the same day that we arrived from Bocas. So, we had this beautiful place to share with good friends. We were 20 stories up, with a view of the lights of the big city and the port where ships awaited their turn to enter the canal.

The view towards downtown from our 20th floor apartment.

Despite all the highrises some small, colonial style buildings are among the mix. This home was just below us, when we looked straight down from our apartment. Perhaps the guy from Up! lives here..
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On day one, we visited the Casco Viejo (the old city) and took in the sights of a number of ruins. Highlights included:

• This is a poor photo (I took it) of the ruins of the Church of Santo Domingo and the Arco Chato. The arch in the photo was built in the late 1600s and when folks were considering where to build the inter-ocean canal to connect Atlantic to Pacific, one argument in favor of Panama was the lack of earthquakes in the country, specifically as evidenced by the longevity of this arch.

• 
  
  Killer ice cream at Granclement Ice Cream. This stuff was really yummy. Riley had mint ice-cream, After-Eight. I had Dulce de Leche--rich and creamy. Tae had...chocolate chip, yummy yummy. Baker had Rocky Road - good and chunky. Tara had, get this, Basil ice cream. Loved it!  (Would love to post a few photos of this, but the photo upload tool has just quit on me...later.)
• Running around the National Theater. I am sure is was strictly forbidden but there was absolutely nobody there. First the kids climbed the stairs to the second, third and even fourth story balconies. It was just a matter of time from there that they would invade the stage and backstage too and have a great game of tag all over this beautiful building. The law-abiding adults did not take photos...

After a brilliant luch of ceviche, we headed out to the Miraflores Locks of the Panama Canal, the locks closest to the city. Our visit is captured on this video. It was a great visit. Enormous ships passed through while we were there, pulled by small electric trains (no, not that small--not like toy trains!)

The next day, Tara and Katy Tutton did a thing that is hard to do anywhere but Panama. In a mere three and a half hours, they went from Pacific to Atlantic to Pacific again! They took the Panama Canal train, which parallels the length of the Canal from Panama City to Colon, on the Atlantic Coast. Then they grabbed a cab to drive them back to the Pacific, all before 11 a.m. I'd like to see one of you NY/NJ folks or Californians grab a local cab and head to the opposite ocean!

Pura Vida!