Casco Viejo

On sunday morning (honestly it was 12am ;-) we took the Diablo Rojo to Downtown Panama to visit Casco Viejo which is the second oldest part of Panama (after Panama Viejo). Casco Viejo is a nice place with lots of old buildings and the Canal Museum. It is surrounded with the not so nice parts of Panama City ("no-go" areas) and is thus heavily patrolled by a special Tourist Police (very friendly guys) who keep telling you where it is not a good idea to go. Nevertheless, Casco Viejo has the presidential palace, the canal museum, national theatre, the french ebassy, and many more old buildings. It's quite interesting that this (rather important) part of Panama City is surrounded by completely run-down areas.



After striving around a bit - and hitting the "no-go" borders several times - we found the Canal Museum which was cheap, interesting, and with air condition ;-) I found out that Panama has these many National Parks not because they like nature so much, they simply need the water from the rain forests for running the canal. They say it's one of the few examples where nature profits from technology.



After striving around some hours, Angie (from my work) phoned me, picked us up and showed us a few other places in Downtown Panama City. Finally we went to the Hard Rock Café for dinner, which was a quite expensive experience. They played the same bloody playlist as in the Hard Rock Café Munich, where I've been 2 months ago. Finally we decided to go to Albrook Mall, where the only movie in English we've not seen was Fast and the Furious 3 - I've never seen a more stupid movie...