Looking towards the Old Town and just beyond to the entrance/exit of the Panama Canal.
A closer view of the Old Town taken with my camera's telephoto lens.
You might just be able to see the sun rising between the clouds and the gap in the skyscrapers.
I could see several frigatebirds gliding and soaring on the thermals above the water. Try as I might, I couldn't get a good close-up. This is the best of the bunch.
We had a late breakfast and then decided to walk the couple of kilometres along the front to visit the Old Town, which is a World Heritage site.
The sun had come out and it was the perfect time of day to take a stroll along the impressive Panama City waterfront with its towering skyscrapers.
There was this stunning piece of architecture just behind the waterfront skyscrapers. The building is shaped like an enormous corkscrew and I have never seen anything like it before.
Halfway to the Old Town, we passed this statue to Vasco Nunez de Balboa, the first European to see the Pacific Ocean in 1513.
Over now to the ornithologists amongst the followers of this blog. We saw these pretty birds feeding off the grass. Anyone know what they are?
Another frigatebird flew by, this time quite close, giving me the chance to take a much better photo than the one I took through the window of our hotel room.
Just before we reached the Old Town, we walked past the fishermen's jetty where they were unloading small fishing boats. The pelicans were watching from their perches on the roof and you can just see one in the upper left-hand corner of the photo.
Nearby, I saw this small boat moored in the harbour, with a 'crew' of pelicans and three cormorants. You can see one of the cormorants on the very left of the photo.
Another photo of the pelicans crowded on to the boat.
I liked this shot of the Panama City skyline in the background and the 'pelican' boat in the foreground.
Following Wendy, Bob & Thelma as we approached the Old Town, or Casco Viejo.
We noticed several buildings with dilapidated corrugated iron roofs. This one had people living in the rooms directly underneath the roof!
We walked through the narrow streets of the Old Town where there was much construction and renovation of the old buildings taking place.
If you look closely you can see that the house on the left is a ruin with the windows and doorways bricked up.
We reached a square, where we stopped to have a drink, and across the road was the very beautiful Metropolitan Cathedral. It had wonderful stained-glass windows and a magnificent altar.
A rather beautiful statue of Christ held by Mary, after being taken down from the cross.
We continued our walk through the Old Town which took us past the Foreign Ministry, a very beautiful building with two huge pink and blue ribbons. I presume the pink ribbon was for breast cancer awareness, but what the blue ribbon signified, I do not know.
The National Theatre building.
A look back across the bay to Panama City with the dark clouds making the skyscrapers stand out.
How's this for an impressive view?
A group of schoolgirls walked past us, dressed in their school uniform. I turned round and took this photo. I liked the line of girls beneath the skyscrapers in the distance.
We reached the southernmost point of the Old Town and I saw, in the distance, the Bridge of the Americas, which takes the Pan-American Highway across the Pacific entrance to the Panama Canal. The bridge was built in 1962.
We started our return through the Old Town, again walking through more very pretty streets.
By now the rain, that had been threatening to fall, had started and we decided to take a cab back to our hotel. Once back, we had a pleasant lunch in the hotel restaurant.
This evening we are intending to return to the Old Town. We saw a rather interesting wine-tasting and tapas bar where we might start our evening and then move on to one of the many restaurants we walked past.
At 7pm we took a taxi back into the Old Town and went to the tapas bar to try the wine-tasting, but were told it was only done on a Tuesday, so we moved on to find a restaurant in the square by the cathedral. We found a very pleasant-looking one called La Forchetta. We had a very good meal, washed down by plenty of good Italian Pinot Grigio!
When it came to getting a taxi back to the hotel, Wendy wanted the restaurant to call for one, but I had seen a lot of empty taxis passing the restaurant while we were eating, so we waited outside. I hailed the first empty taxi and told the driver we wanted to go to the Intercontinental Miramar and off we sped. After a few minutes, we started to wonder where he was going as we drove through a myriad of back streets, clearly in the wrong direction, eventually coming to what turned out to be a country club! The driver had misunderstood my English! We turned round and ten minutes later we reached the hotel. Next time I'll listen to my wife!
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