After a week of snorkeling, kayaking, overeating, and cruising the Panama Canal, we are back in Panama City, which would now be near the top of my short list of favorite cities if it wasn’t for its overbearing heat and humidity.
(photo by Robb Geiger)
The UnCruise cruise was great. I’ll tell you more about it in a few days. For now, I just want to fill you in with some photos from our few days in Panama City before and after the cruise.
Our first evening back in the city, staying at the Bristol Hotel in a room even larger and more luxurious than the last one, we went to the Fish Market with a couple of friends for dinner.
Great ceviche, colorful (but loud) scene, and a ton of fried food (next time we’ll order the whole fish instead).
The next day we started at the Biomuseo (The Museum of Biodiversity designed by Frank Gehry). This fascinating museum makes a great case for preserving biodiversity and demonstrates the critical role of the isthmus of Panama, which served as land bridge between North and South America, in shaping the natural and cultural history of the world.
From there we went to the Casco Viejo, the old city, an UNESCO World Heritage Site, which is being carefully restored in anticipation of the visit by the Pope in 2019.
Our day ended at the roof top bar at the Tantalo Hotel in the old city, with great views of the downtown and one (actually several) of the best mojitos I have ever had. As you can see from a couple of the photos below, this a hip bar for beautiful young people. I felt very fortunate that they allowed a grizzled geezer and his beautiful but significantly older wife into their world for a couple of hours. 
I’ll conclude with a whole bunch of additional photos of the skyline. In the interests of getting this done and getting out of the hotel room into the steam bath of the city, I haven’t bothered to edit or select. 
Hi Don from the broiling Midwest. Who knew we couldn’t escape the heat and humidity by coming back to fall in Chicago!! Anyway, think it’s worth mentioning to readers that apparently, many of the new highrises have been built in the last 10 years or less, and on spec, expecting a lot of gringos, or somebody, to show up to buy them. Hasn’t happened. Building owners are stuck with a lot of empty space. One guide suggested looking carefully at the night skyline to notice all the dark units…!
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