Panama City: Day 6 & The Cinca Costera & Frank Gehry

Cinca Costera: I walked the "coastal belt" today, a highway you can walk along side that jets out from the city like a lasso or sure, belt.

I walked it today after a Russian I met at dinner last night, Vasily (like the sniper in Enemy at the Gates!), suggested it, a great suggestion. It's a nicely developed path with greenery, water fountains, runners, rollerbladers, people holding hands... it had a really nice vibe.

So I walked the 3.5K, looking out over the city coastline and also caught a far off glimpse of the Biomuseo, designed by Frank Gehry. Hard to miss, really, with its boxy bright colors.

I loved the far-off view of the squat old-world Casco Viejo buildings up against a background of skyscrapers.

I love those pictures because they almost capture all of Panama City in one shot. I like to use a scale of 10 when deciding if I take a picture of something. If it captures at least 6/10 of the scene in person, I take/keep it. If not, forget it, or garbage. A 5/10 or less picture is not how I want to remember it. Mental picture time. Nothing is EVER 10/10 unless it's a picture of just people. Maybe if you're an amazing photographer, you can get 10/10 or even 11/10 in some cases but I would never know unless I was there with them taking the picture. Anyway theses 2 pics are get 6/10 but I still love them. It seems to me Panama City has three or four unique cities within it: The new city center & its skyscrapers, Casco Viejo (the old city), the neighborhoods you want to avoid as a tourist (a couple of pictures and a video below) and finally, the city interior I'll call it, where I'm staying, which has something of all three.

Tip: I walked the interior loop.

In my Uber back, I saw more of the coastline, right above the Cinca Costera in that little corner bit that connects to Avenida Balboa, and up maybe 7-10 blocks. All of it looked lovely, like a really nice part of the city. A little above that is nice too, Marbella neighborhood.

Also, an update: the traffic hasn't been as bad since my first day. I've been taking Ubers and it's been fine. I still avoid rush hours on weekdays.

#PanamaCity #CincaCostera #FrankGehryBiomuseo #CourtneyComstockblog #PanamaCitywalk