9/29 -- And Now We're in Panama

We got on our plane at 9 last night and landed at 6am this morning. Our hotel is in the old town and lucky for us, a room was available on arrival. The previous hotel used was in the very built up area of the new town, and we had a nice view of it from the freeway as we drove in from the airport. Where we are is a lot more walkable, I think.

Central Hotel in Panama City where we will also end our tour.

View to the left and right (below) from our balcony.

 

This building behind us is the best preserved
colonial house that survives in the Old Quarter.

We actually took a nap after breakfast, because our attempts at airplane sleep were pretty pathetic. By 1:30, we were rejuvinated and set out to see what we could find. We are on a small peninsula, so we walked toward the water in all three directions. We saw the complex that Noriega used, and a lot of old buildings that were  nothing but facades. This is a historical area so the fronts of the building have to stay and apparently there are limits and high costs associated with recreating the insides. Our hotel is one of the buildings that was restored, and features like the wooden 4 story staircase were recreated to match the original.

Church across from the hotel: partially restored, with more
work continuing

An old building that still has its insides, but
has been bricked up on the ground floor,
probably to protect it.

Interesting restaurant menu option on the right side:
Puerquito Chinatown

The new town -- LOTS of condos and apartments and
buildings with interesting architecture.

Former Union Club for Panama's social Elite. Below:
what it used to look like.

Line of of ships waiting for canal access.

Biomuseo, designed by Frank Gehry. Across the bay from us.

Memorial to all the leaders who envisioned
and finally built the canal.

A ruined church

Are we back home?

A facade building with external supports.

Some sort of bird near a pretty beach

Looking toward the new city from the swimming pool
deck of our hotel.

With the rain forecasts here at 80-100%each day for the duration of our trip, we were very happy to arrive in sunshine and not experience rain during our walk. The sky was threatening, we saw lightning over the new town, and apparently it rained there, but we stayed dry. It gives me hope that maybe we won't get drenched every day!

We finished the day with a  pleasant dinner in the place with the Chinese pork (I had orange chicken and Jim got sea bass) where we discovered we were sitting next to another couple from our trip.

8/30 -- Home and Irish Rain

We had a long day getting back to San Francisco, but thankfully, our plane was due to leave a 12:30pm, so at least we had a reasonable departure time. We flew through Toronto and went through US Immigration and Customs there so all we had to do at SFO was collect our bags, which arrived quickly and walk out to the curb where our son-in-law Jesse and grandson Dylan were already waiting for us -- probably one of the quickest trips through the airport to our car ever!

While we were in Ireland, Holly shared descriptions of the types of rain there (like Eskimos identify a bunch of kinds of snow...).

Irish Rain

1. Torrential Rain: Unrelenting. Falling rapidly and with force, in copious quantities
2. Lashing Rain: Diagonal hard rain (think hurricane weather)
3. Sheets of Rain:  Seems like walls of rain coming down
4. Heavens Opened:   Sudden onset of strong solid flow of rain
5. Bucketing Rain:  Out in this rain, you feel like you’re instantly soaked
6. Pissing Rain:  Vertical hard rain (not as much wind as Lashing Rain)
7. Wet Rain:  Not necessarily a heavy rain, but one that dampens you and soaks your clothes
8. Trying to Rain:  The clouds have some in them, but it’s not quite coming down with consistency
9. Sun Shower:  Raining while sunny out. Perfect rainbow weather
10. Soft Day:  Cloudy Weather with soft mist or drizzle (typical Irish weather)
11. Grand Soft Day:  A humid day with a fine, light drizzle
12. Dry Rain:  Mist that doesn’t get you wet, even though it is technically raining