Satellite
Show on map
  • Day 148

    Panama City

    May 24, 2017 in Panama ⋅ ⛅ 32 °C

    I hadn't been in a proper city since my two days in Guatemala City in January so I was kind of excited to get to Panama City.
    Panama City is a weird mix of old and new as well as rich and poor. My hostel was in the old town with lots of nice and old buildings. But from here you had a view to the other side of Panama City with it's quite impressive skyline. The area of my hostel was pretty touristy with also a few fancy hotels and restaurants. But to get there from the metro you had to walk down Avenida Central which was a big shopping street that wasn't fancy at all. And if you would leave this maon street into the back alleys you would see how people were actually living in huge rundown buildings.
    Maybe it was just because I hadn't been in a city for so long or because of this differences that made the city quite interesting but I actually really liked Panama City.
    I had to do quite a lot of organizing after not having proper WIFI for a while (and more interesting things to do) so I spend my first day here just ticking off points of my To-Do-list like extending my travel insurance and finding a new person subletting my apartment.
    After I had finished all the necessary things I started exploring the neighborhood. It was nice to just stroll around and I took a lot of pictures of random curiosities.
    The hostel I stayed was kind of a party hostel with a bar attached downstairs which had ridiculous cheap drinks at happy hour. Normally I don't like it when the party mood is kind of forced onto you. But my second night Leila arrived from El Valle and we ended up going out after happy hour with some guys from the hostel. At some point we left the guys to go back to the hostel to sleep as we were really tired. But instead we got hassled into a bar on our way home with the offer of a free drink and ended up dancing to Reggaeton for a while. I guess this is how the best parties happen - unexpected. When we finally got back to the hostel the others were already asleep.
    One other thing I really liked about Panama City was the fish market. There were a ton of simple restaurants serving fresh fish and ceviche. And it was a good mix of locals and tourists. Leila took me there one night and I actually went back twice.
    I learned about the perks of backpacking life when I took advantage of the americanization of this country and bought me a Boston Cream Dunkin Donut and left it in the hostel fridge. I was really looking forward to the donut as even though I pretend to hate American fast food I love Donuts. But when I wanted to get it from the fridge it was gone! I stored it in a bag with lots of other stuff and all that was still there. So someone must have been going through the bags looking for something appealing. I hope he enjoyed my donut!
    After three full days in the City I left for Puerto Lindo from where I would catch the sailboat to Colombia.
    Read more