I am an average person and I only have one day to explore Panama City: What do I do?

By Above-Average Contributor, Matt Landau 

First and foremost, thank you all for allowing me to be part of your little “average” cult. It's truly an honor and a pleasure. 

Panama City is an amazing city and perhaps my favorite in the world. Accordingly, trying to do everything in 24 hours can be hard on the legs, eyes, breast, chest, neck and head. For convenience, I have broken things down and created a simple itinerary for you complete with locations and landmarks (for cabdriver ease). 

9:00 AM:  Panama Canal Tour

The Panama Canal is all nice and dandy in history books and it looks pretty when you see it on TV, but visiting the locks and touring the museum are out of this world. The Miraflores Locks are an easy cab ride, about 15 minutes, outside the city. Entrance fee is around $8 but if you're a senior citizen you may be able to fake an injury and get in for free. Spend a few hours in the museum, the movie theater, and on the observatory deck watching giant cruise liners wedge through the narrow gates.

12:00 PM:  Lunch

Sure you can go to a fancy place for lunch—wear your best outfit and eat culinary creations from around the world. But instead, I'd recommend the down-home Panamanian place where I eat lunch every day. Jap Jap (located in the neighborhood ‘El Carmen') is an open air eatery with more-or-less traditional Panamanian food. Enjoy your meal of whole roasted chicken or seared steaklets in a spicy tomato sauce, with a nice refreshing fruit drink (called a ‘chicha'). Your meal here should cost no more than $3. 

1:30 PM:   Casco Viejo Tour

What used to be the center of Panama City is now a beautiful historic town with New Orleans-esque architecture and Charlestony cobblestone. A good landmark is the restaurant Las Bovedas, from which you can walk a scenic course along the water. Snap a few photos of the city line and perhaps Noriega's US-bombed Night Club (now artistically deteriorating a la the Parthenon). Here you can buy traditional crafts from Panamanian Kuna Indians here. Don't be fooled: as cute as they are in their customary clothing, they can drive a hard bargain.  

3:00 PM: The Amador Causeway

Now, I know you're doing a lot today, but keep up the good work—you're doing great. The ride out to the causeway is a site in itself: a beautiful palm-studded boulevard with water on both sides, like some sort of floating Mario Brothers passageway. Have a nice cold lemonade at the Amador Yacht Club looking out over the stunningly massive yachts and equally impressive Panama city line. When you sit back and watch ships enter the Panama Canal, trust me, you'll feel anything but average.  

4:30 PM:  Nap

Self explanatory

6:00 PM:  Dinner

Panama City has a brilliantly diverse restaurant scene. You can find eateries of almost any ethnicity and everything is very reasonably priced, by American standards. I'd recommend a restaurant called Machu Pichu in El Cangrejo which serves some of the best Peruvian food I've ever had. If Peruvian ceviche isn't your cup of tea, try a Spanish restaurant called XOXO. Both are winners. 

7:30 PM: The Night Time is the Right Time

The following is a list of Bars, Lounges, and Clubs that I recommend.

-Crown Casino

-Hippos

-Istmo Brew Pub

-Unplugged

-Decapolis

-La Casona de Las Brujas

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Comments (1)

StepToLife.com: Mi Pueblito, Parque Natural Metropolitano This is a good list, but almost everyone overlooks Mi Pueblito. If you do the Casco Viejo tour then get a taxi to take you on a little side trip over to Mi Pueblito. Have him wait for you there. It's a life-sized replica of three life-sized Panamanian villages: a traditional Azuero-style pueblo, an Afro-Antillean village, and an Embera village. Crafts are sold in several places, and an old Afro-Antillean man plays calypso music for passers-by. Make sure you do down to the Embera village, where you can get some nice crafts on the cheap, directly from the artisans who make them on site. There's also a nice little woods down there just past the Embara village and you are likely to see some exotics animals, perhaps even monkeys and ñeques (a large hopping rodent). If you're more of a naturist, go over to the Parque Natural Metropolitano on the other side of town and allocate at least an hour for a hike through the forest. It's quite nice and still has a lot of wildlife, even after they built a major roadway through it. 1 April 01, 2008

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