After breakfast, we drove out to the Miraflores Locks on the Panama Canal. Every time we drive out to the locks, we always hope that there's at LEAST one ship passing through. The first time we ever went to the locks, we saw several ships going through, the time before today we saw two ships going through and today there was one ship already in the first lock. But that's all you need, really. Because although it is very fascinating to watch the whole process, it IS very hot out there on that observation deck. And those ships don't just race through those locks. It is a very slow process, and when the sun is bearing down on you, the process seems to take a LONG time. It's all very interesting, though, and worth the wait out in the sun.
It was sooo crowded on the deck, but we managed to get in a picture of Fernando and Eva out there.
This is a shot of the ship that was going through while we were there.
After the locks, we drove back to our hotel so that we could hire a taxi to take us to a nearby lookout hill so that we could have a panoramic view of the city. We couldn't even get to the top of the hill because they had a restriction on how many cars could be up at the top, so they were making the rest of us wait in a line along the road for our turn to go up. After several minutes of waiting, and seeing how it was getting later for lunch, we had the taxi driver take us to a restaurant in the middle of Panama City. The streets in downtown Panama City are something we don't care to mess with but we wanted to eat at a restaurant downtown, something we've never done before. Well, even the taxi driver had a hard time finding the restaurant we wanted to go to, because it turns out the restaurant wasn't even there anymore!!! So, we just had him drop us off and we walked to a Japanese restaurant we had seen right before that. There is this really neat building downtown that looks like the sides are going up around in a circle. I tried to get a picture of it as the taxi zipped by but with the rain coming down hard and the taxi going so fast, this was all I could get of it. Right when the billboard got in front of it.....
But you can kind of see it there behind the billboard.....
After lunch, we caught a taxi back to our hotel and rested up a bit. Later that evening, we got a taxi again to take us to a section of Panama City called Casco Viejo. We asked the taxi driver to take us out to Casco Viejo and drop us off at a grocery store called El Machetazo. Guillermo and I had been to El Machetazo a few times before about 2 years ago, so we knew that this store was just on the edge of Casco Viejo. But what we didn't know was that this store backed up to one of the worst sections of Panama City. The taxi driver was not able to drive to the front of the store (and we remembered later that yes, the front of the store is on a pedestrian walk) so he kept telling us he was going to drop us off at the back of the store but that we should go out the FRONT of the store. Well, when we got there, we knew exactly why he kept saying that. It looked PRETTY rough on the back side of that store, although that was one of the entrances to the store. We kept thinking that this has to be a different store than the one we remembered, but when we walked inside, we recognized it right away as the store we had been to before. So, we felt quite uneasy getting out of the taxi and then walking through the store and down the pedestrian walk, which also looked a little shadier than we remembered.
But finally we got to the section known as Casco Viejo and we felt a little more comfortable, although this area also has its rough spots. The neat thing about Casco Viejo is that it is being revitalized - so as you walk down the streets in this section, you can see many old and delapidated buildings and then right next to those old buildings or just around the corner from them, you'll find a gem. A fancy restaurant or a part of a building that has been totally renovated and is now a very beautiful structure. That is what makes this place so appealing - you never know what you're going to discover.
We walked to Plaza Francia and admired the view from the sea wall there. This time, the tide was WAY out.
While walking around on this side of the plaza, it started to rain a little so we slipped inside the restaurant we thought we might have dinner at later on in the evening. We made a reservation there for 7pm and by the time we got back outside, the rain had more or less quit. We continued walking around the sea wall and
these pictures are taken on the side of the Plaza that faces the Panama City skyline.
It was hard getting a picture here, with all the people walking by or skateboarding around. But we managed, and in this picture it's a little easier to see that building that looks like it's spiraling upwards.
A very pretty covered walkway as we were leaving the plaza.
By the time we walked all around the plaza, we were pretty thirsty so we went to one of our favorite outdoor restaurants and got a few drinks.
Then it was time to head back to the restaurant where we had made reservations. Very interesting building that houses this restaurant. The building used to be a jail!!
This picture the waiter took came out a little blurry, but still, you can see all four of us!
We weren't sure if it'd be easy to get a taxi after dinner, and thought we'd get to walk around Casco Viejo a little more, but we caught a taxi right away. It was a wonderful relaxing evening.
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