Well, it’s certainly a good thing that we rebooked because no Boston-Atlanta flight left until 10pm Friday and neither Atlanta-Panamá flight left that day. We wouldn’t have arrived until probably Sunday. Instead, we had an extra day for which I had absolutely no plan.
We arrived and navigated Panama City’s relatively new metro system. It wasn’t immediately obvious how to get to our destination, but somebody offered us directions and, more importantly, I fully understood them! Less than an hour later, we were at our hotel.
Panama uses the US dollar. They have dollar coins that they mint, but otherwise, the money from home is the same as here. Convenient, for sure, but I did miss the ritual of inspecting the currency.
Dinner was at a beer garden adjacent to the hotel around the corner (tired, desperate travelers are not picky), and I enjoyed my first of many ceviche de pescado meals. Panama and Peru dispute who first came up with ceviche; all I can say is that the fact that the water is safe to consume in Panama makes me enjoy the ceviche much more here. There’s much more of a rush eating it in Peru since you don’t know if that will be the cause of your GI demise or not.
Of course, we also went to the grocery store. El Rey is not as fabulous as El Exito in Colombia, but it’s still a large and impressive grocery store. We bought the strangest assortment of items – beer (legal drinking age is 18, so Anna-Sophia also picked out something, which is weird to me), gummy candy, wafer cookies, toothpaste, and granola bars.
Our hotel, Toscana Inn, is fine. It’s a pretty generic mid-range hotel. It’s clean and safe and in a good neighborhood so it checks all the boxes, but it isn’t memorable by any means. Nevertheless, it has a rooftop patio which is a delightful way to spend the evenings. We took a few beers and some treats up there and sat, talked, and admired the skyline as night settled in.
Vacation Days 