Today’s adventure in Panama City was to go visit the hot new museum in the city, the BioMuseo – the Panamanian museum of biodiversity. We started our day, as we have since Friday, by having a huge breakfast in the DoubleTree’s restaurant. They have a pretty good breakfast and we are very thankful that, for some reason, we were given breakfast for the weekend.
The trip out to the BioMuseo was nice. We found our way there pretty easily. The museum is out on the peninsula sticking out into the ocean on the west side of the city hear the Bridge of the Americas and just before the causeway going out to the islands that were the primary offloading point for the ships coming from Peru in the old days when the Spanish Empire was shipping gold through Panamá.
The museum was very nice. It was quite modern and well done. It was really focused on exploring biodiversity in Panamá and the isthmus’ key role in the dispersion of species going from South America to North America and vice versa. It was not very big, however, and so we went through it relatively quickly. The girls had a good time.
We got coffee and then ice cream at the museum. While we were there a big rainstorm came which was really neat. The outdoor seating at the cafe was wonderful and we had great views of the ocean, islands the bridge as well as the other direction to the city which we got to see the storm come over as it headed towards us.
The girls did a little shopping in the gift shop. We took a quick drive out the causeway and went to the islands just to see them. They were pretty neat. They are all restaurants, marinas and hotels these days. Nothing like what they used to be centuries ago.
On the way back to the hotel we saw a restaurant that really looked good along the way not far from the BioMuseo. We mentioned it as we went past and thought that it would be a nice place to go for dinner but it was far too early to be eating at this point.
We went to the hotel and relaxed for a while in the afternoon. These hot days are exhausting and the kids can only do so much before they want to go back and just play with their toys.
We took the girls up to the rooftop pool and did some swimming for quite some time. Dominica spent the evening in the hot tub while I swam in the big pool with the girls. This is one of the first times that I really got to swim with Liesl now that she is actually swimming. She had a lot of fun.
In the evening, when it was dark, we drove out to the peninsula again to go to the Italian restaurant that we had seen there. We ended up having a wonderful dinner that we were so happy with sitting out on the ocean front. There was a great breeze and the sound of the ocean and we were in an all outdoor restaurant with good food and service. It was not busy at all. A great decision.