9/30 -- Explore Panama City

Another day ALMOST without rain! Got sprinkled on a couple times, but with the heat, it was more relief than annoying. I guess I shouldn't have been so worried, but the forecasts all looked dreadful.

Panama City, it turns out, has more than one old city. The old quarter we are in is the new old quarter after the original one was burned in an attack by the pirate Henry Morgan in 1671. The survivors decided the old location was indefensible and moved the city 8  km away to the Old Quarter where we are now. The new city, with its many skyscrapers and interested architecture came much later.

The Presidential Palace at the edge of the New Old City
where we are staying

We drove through the new city on the way to the original, which is now the site of a museum and stone remnants of the original buildings. When Noriega was in power, he built a palace among the ruins and a horse stable behind the remains of the cathedral. His palace was torn down and replaced with the museum we visited today.

BMW store!

Ruins above and below. Many of the rocks were reused
in other projects.

 

This apparently an ebony-winged damselfly. It landed on Jim,
then me.

Relief map of the original old city. The new city is behind it
and the new old city is further back off the map.

Cathedral bell tower and some walls. There were 3 Catholic
denominations represented in the old town.

The main part of the Cathedral

Next 4 photos: views from each side of the tower.

The climb was 115 steps to the top.

More ruins

Another cathedral

Reservoir for the area

Burial grounds under excavation at the site.

We had a group lunch near the hotel, and afterwards, several of us joined Octavio on a walk to shopping district and Chinatown (which was pretty much of a disappointment among the Chinatowns we have seen) before returning to our hotel for a short break.

Some great architecture here!

The peninsula of the new old town.ahead

Colorful fence guards a playground.

Walking down Central Ave, now partly a
pedestrian shopping mall, we came across
this neglected building being taken over
by greenery.

Above and below: Murals on one of the side streets.

Chinatown gate

Above and below: Chinatown murals

 

View back to the new city and another
interesting looking tower.

Local man with his parrot.

At 4:30, we set out again for a guided walk through the old quarter, some of which Jim and I had explored yesterday, only today we got context.One very interesting stop was an original part of the wall that protected the city, which was right  next to what had been a boat-shaped building that housed over 20 indigent families. It burned to the ground earlier this year and residents were promised help, but it never came through. Right next door, another group was organizing a protest against a government plan to sell a public space that had been promised for social (i.e. supported) housing. About three years ago, this group took over a school that had been abandoned seven years earlier and they have have turned into housing for 28 families by subdividing the classrooms. We were allowed into the school and a peek into one of the small apartments.

Our Lady of Mercy Church next 4 photos.

This was labeled ''Poor Christ'. He is an
articulated statue whose attire is regularly changed.

Where the wall used to be

Ruins of the ship-shaped building that burned this year.

School across the street converted to housing.

The  leader of the housing resistance movement

One of several banners here.

Clothing hung in a central area of the
abandoned school

From there, we walked to the waterfront we had explored yesterday. By then, 14,000 steps  later, I was fading due in large part to the heat and humidity. I know that if I stay active, this will get easier in a few days, but I was close to crash mode, so we left the group to finish the walk home, with the intention of skipping dinner. Fortunately, there is a tiny grocery store across from the hotel, so we stopped and got Jim a snack (I already had snacks because I am wary about many of the breakfasts that we encounter) so that we could go back to our room and collapse.

I forget who the statue was, but the building
behind was rescued by a clever entrepanuer:
It had been a drug house and the park very
dangerous. A rich guy bought the place and
co-opted the bad guys by giving them jobs and
training so that they didn't need violence
to survive. It is a popular restaurant now.

The place was built in 1675.

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