After arriving at our Hotel Coral Suites in downtown Panamá, we headed to the rooftop pool and surveyed the city skyline. It was the perfect juxtaposition to the view yesterday from the top of La Iglesia Santa Maria in Taboga, a 16th century church - the first in Latin America. We were let into the darkened church by the caretaker who lives next door and thought the tour was over then but she motioned us to a small door, which could have been the hatch by which they dispatch heathen foreigners who enter churches for sightseeing but was actually a tiny door leading to a tiny spiral stair leading to a tiny bell tower. The view was breathtaking, and also heart stopping. I hadn't known myself to be particularly claustrophobic or afraid of heights, but the tiny crumbling steps in the tiny pocked adobe staircase made my size 7 feet feel like boats in a bathtub. I snapped two photos and descended fast as I could.
Today's accomplishment was an exploration of Casco Viejo, the old town section of Panama City, full of colonial buildings and ancient churches. Yesterday, we marveled at the engineering feat of the Panama Canal.
We continue to enjoy great food - tender shredded beef in the
ropa vieja, tasty
arroz con pollo and a local alcoholic drink called
seco that is made of distilled cane sugar. We ended the evening by having dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant where there were more Vietnamese people than Panamanians, and if we thought deciphering a Spanish menu was complicated, we found one that was in two languages, neither of which we really understood. Thank goodness for a strong sense of adventure and a bad case of 'ignorance is bliss'.
Hasta mañana!
View from the bell tower at Iglesia Santa Maria
Another skyline, Panamá City
Old town Panama - Casco Viejo
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