Anytime someone makes it through another year with me they should get a medal. When I was a kid I thought folks that were married (to the same person) for even 20-25 years – well that was a long time. I never imagined, at that time, that I would surpass that milestone. I tried to get out of all the anniversary hoopla by saying that we know live on the beach, in the tropics so lets just go floating at high tide. Well needless to say ‘we’ decided to celebrate a little more special. After 2+ months in Panama we have not spent time in the capital city so we decided to go in town for 2 days and see/do a few things.

While in Panama we have chosen to live without a car. The driving is quite hazardous to your health, so we take the bus or taxi’s everywhere. Using public transport the city is about 1:45-2 hours away. First we take a small bus/van from our neighborhood up to the highway (Pan-American Hwy). At the Hwy you can get on another small bus generally called a Coaster or wait for the big bus. Going towards town to the central terminal at Albrook we chose to take the big bus. These are big modern buses that are usually on their way from one of the other major cities in the country heading to Panama City (Albrook Central Terminal). Both the Coaster and big buses usually have air-conditioning. The big buses are mostly quite comfy and some even have ‘el bano’ on board. They all have LOUD music. The big buses most always have a fairly large TV screen with either a movie or some kind of music video. I repeat, it is played loudly. Below is a picture of the front of our large KIA bus on this trip.

We made a few stops on the way to the city to pick up some other passengers. Sometimes at these stops someone will get on the bus and try to shake down the passengers to get them to buy or donate to something. ‘No comprende’ comes in handy sometime. This trip we had a girl come on board and ask if anyone wanted to buy some Churros. She was on and off in a matter of a minute or so as the stops are extremely short.

We have taken the bus to Albrook before but have not gone into the city. When we arrived at Albrook we were told to take the Metro or a taxi to the city. The taxi should have been $5 since we only needed to go a few miles but if they see you are a Gringo it goes higher and you either have to bargain them down or walk away. They said $10 we said $5. Another said $12 we said good-bye. It was a busy time of the day so they could easily wait for the next Gringo to make their money. Next we looked for the Metro. We saw big city buses that said Metro-Bus but we couldn’t tell which bus from which zone, etc..to take. It was hot and we were getting tired. We tried asking some people and they would point back into the terminal while rattling off some Spanish. We went to a ticket window and they pointed to an area where we would catch the buses back to where we just came so we knew that was wrong. Patience, patience, patience…we finally found what looked to be an information center with a girl who spoke ‘muy poco’ English but enough to make sense of things. She looked up our destination on her smart phone and then also pointed, like the others, towards the return buses, except she also said Metro-Train. We questioned, Train? She again pointed and said ‘Si, Train, Metro’. Ah ha!! To the side of this bus area was an escalator that led to a bridge we needed to cross to get to the Metro-Train-Subway. Whatever you want to call it. It is all three, as it is Panama’s 1st subway called ‘The Metro’ not to be confused with the Metro-Bus, which we did. The girl even told us which stop, #4 Inglesia de Carmen. From there it was easy-breezy-lemon-squeezy.

We made it on/off the subway and knew our hotel was within walking distance of the station – The BlueBay City, a 4 star hotel. No I did’t spring for the Trump Towers even if he might be our next president. Our Metro stop was called Inglesia de Carmen probably because there was a beautiful church called Our Lady of Mt Carmel at the major intersection – pictures below. There are many old and beautiful churches with stations, stops, major roads, etc…named after them. More on the churches to come. I finally mapped the hotel on google and walked to it from there. It was a nice place with an Asian theme including the Shushi restaurant/bar on the main floor. The folks there were real helpful and some spoke pretty good English. One thing we found ‘unique’ was that the bathroom had a giant shower the full width of the bathroom and was separated from the rest of the room by a glass wall and no door. It was a good 1/3 of the whole room. A whole family could have fit in that shower. I did hear the Asians are family oriented and multigenerational but I think that was stretching the whole Feng Shui thing a bit much.

On our first evening we had hired a driver to take us to one of the malls where they have a ‘Cinepolis VIP’ theater. A few words on Panama City. It is a very large, very sophisticated, and very modern city. It has more buildings over 21 floors than NYC. This mall would rival anything found in the USA except it was newer and maybe cleaner. Everything glittered and shined. We wish we would have gone earlier in the day as there was a Tony Roma’s and a nice good old fashioned plate of ribs sounded great. When we walked up to the ticket desks for the theater we said we wanted the VIP showing. They pointed behind us and smiled. We turned and saw special elevators marked as VIP to take us to another floor. Once at the right place we bought our tickets for the recently released Mission Impossible movie. Seats are assigned. We entered our specific theater and there were rows of very large ‘lazy boy’ type seats that go almost all the way back. Very very cushy. There was a little switch where, once flipped, a waiter comes to you and takes your food/drink order from the menus by your chair. They take your order on their iPad as well as run your payment. They then bring your food as the movie is proceeding. For us, who do not go to movies often, this was pretty fun.

The next morning, after our complementry breakfast – Denise choose the Mexican plate – we went for a walk around the area.

We were in the business district. There was a lot of old plaza shops, a grocery, casinos, banks, more hotels and oh, more churchs. At 3PM we had a hired car take us to Old Town – Casco Antiguo. This is in the area where the presidential palace is except the president doesn’t live there, the red-tape of the government takes place there. The area in this district had gotten very very bad, gangs, poor, etc….There has been an ongoing effort to revitalize the area. We saw may buildings that had been stripped out and were being refurbished. The architecture is quite beautiful, very French. It has a very New Orleans look and feel to it. There were many tourist shops selling much the same items from shop to shop just like any other tourist area you might have been to. The area seamed quite peaceful and beautiful. It is all located on the waterfront across the bay from the now current modern city. Some pics are below. An item of note is the church of San Jose that has a historic all gold alter – yes solid gold. It is said that during the pilfering of Panama during the pirate days of Captain Morgan that a priest had the alter covered in tar to disguise the gold from the pirates – or something like that – what am I Wikipedia?

We also found a very comfortable outdoor bar that had swinging chairs. We spent a bit of time there before heading to dinner at a small Italian restaurant for the special of the night, spaghetti, and we added a pitcher of wonderful Sangria.

Next morning we headed back to Albrook. Albrook was an old US military base from what I understand. There you will find the central Subway station, the central bus station AND a giant mall The Albrook mall is giant and we are told it is larger than the Mall of the Americas in MN. They have large animals at the main entrances so you know where you came in/out so you don’t get lost. Obviously we were at the dinosaur entrance.

A unique thing I saw at the mall, and am kicking myself for not getting a picture, is the bathroom. Let me explain, in the mall if you want to use the bathroom you better have .25. There are people whose livelihood is to stand there and make sure you put a quarter in the turnstile to get into the bathrooms. I suppose they also are responsible for keeping it somewhat clean. So skipping forward, I am in the bathroom mending my mascara and I go to wash my hands. There were about 6 sinks across a counter – pretty typical right? BUT each faucet had a 6 inch LCD screen as part of the faucet mount. These screens played advertisements. Bizarre I thought, until I found that a survey taken by RONMADETHISSURVEYUP.COM showed that those that wash their hands after going to the bathroom spend more money then those that don’t. Ah, now that makes sense. Talk about targeted advertising.

We finally got a Coaster bus ride back to Playa Coronado – 1.5 hours from the station. After quickly getting a few groceries we made it back to the condo and within 30 minutes we were on the rooftop and in the pool. It was nice to get away for a few days but very nice to get back home. We finished our 2 day celebration with dinner at the local watering hole called Picasso’s with a few friends. Denise says it was fitting that we spent our 25th anniversary in Maui and our 30th in Panama City. Not sure how we top that for #35 and 40???? All in all we both had a great anniversary.

As always, with these postings, your comments are welcome. All thoughts are my own except for those attained through hearsay or gossip. Do not feel a need to correct me on any factual items because where I did not know for sure I may have just as well made something up. If there is something you want to know about our experiences or Panama just ask and I will do my best.

RB