June 28-30, 2016
A few days spent enjoying a big North American type city. After enjoying our visit I think we’re still big city dwellers at heart.
Cycling Stats
Start Point: Panama City, Panama, Panama
Sightseeing & Hotel Moves
38 km
Route Description:
Panama City is a big city and normal city traffic is in full force. There are also some great designated cycle routes along the water.
Accommodations:
Loads of hotels to choose from. We cashed in some air miles and stayed at a super fancy hotel; our first in two years.
What happened…
Amanda writes: We ended up staying in Panama City for three more nights and I enjoyed every moment of it. Our first morning we woke up in our last minute hotel room in a seedy part of town and contacted air miles to see if we could change the date of our arrival at the other hotel. It was such an easy and seamless process I was super impressed. I went into the call thinking we wouldn’t be able to change it without fees and end up staying in Panama for 5 nights (not the worst thing either) but they were great! I would totally use air miles again. So we mapped out our route to our fancy new hotel and headed over. Love it! It’s so nice to be in a hotel with concierge, a lobby bar, cheerful front desk agents who want to please you, roof top hot tub, gym, laundry facilities; I could go on but let’s just sum it up by saying it’s awesome. As someone who worked in the hotel industry for high end hotel chains; I can appreciate the little things.
The next couple of days were spent planning our flights to Colombia to start our journey in South America, exploring the city and mostly enjoying our hotel room. We were able to do laundry in a washing machine rather than hand washing clothes and kick back on a plush bed and watch a 47 inch TV. It may sound silly to many of you but these luxuries have been pretty much non-existent for two years so we’re loving it. Panama City is beautiful! We come from Vancouver which includes some pretty nice high rises although they’re all pretty cookie cutter. You’ve got some older heritage type buildings and then the financial district buildings beside the Coal Harbour district of glass fronted buildings. Here in Panama City almost no two building are alike. They’re all so unique and different and the architecture is amazing. We enjoyed time on the seawall riding bikes on the provided paths and I was reminded of how much I miss Vancouver. When I was still working, at lunch time I’d have the pleasure of going for a run on the seawall in Stanley Park and on my bicycle commute home enjoying the ocean view over the Lions Gate bridge. And I was lucky enough to arrive home into my water front apartment on North Vancouver to be able to look back at the beautiful high-rises in Downtown Vancouver over the water … Panama City reminded me of home, very much.