London to Panama City

A day of airports and planes.

We left home at 8am to catch our flight from Heathrow to Miami, departing at 11.15am. We met up in the BA lounge at Terminal 5 with Bob & Thelma and we all enjoyed a good breakfast. The flight left a few minutes late, but we arrived in Miami more or less on schedule at 3pm. The flight had taken just over nine hours.

We had to go through US immigration, even though we were flying on to Panama. This is never a pleasant task, but at least our bags were tagged through to Panama, unlike Bob and Thelma's. They had to collect their bags and then check them in again for the American Airlines flight to Panama.

We left Miami at 6.30pm EST and arrived in Panama at 8.30pm local time, which is 6 hours behind BST. I had arranged for a car to take the four of us to our hotel in Panama City. The journey took about half an hour on pretty empty roads. We arrived at our hotel, the Intercontinental Miramar, at about 10pm. The hotel is in a wonderful position overlooking the Pacific, in the very centre of Panama City. We checked in and took our bags to our rooms and then came down to have a celebratory drink to our upcoming cruise through the Canal.

The weather was overcast but not raining and beautifully warm, at around 25 degrees Celsius. What a change from London!