Finding the Metro, etc.

What a couple of happy days! It doesn’t take much to make us happy.

Stan made the best breakfast on Wednesday. While I was working on the blog, Stan skillet-grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato on white bread with Ranch dressing – we have no mayo, Oh wow, my breakfast was fragrant, hot, crunchy on the outside and gooey-cheesy on the inside! Talk about delicious!!!

We had two items on our agenda that day: Find the nearest metro station, buy a reloadable card, get a map of the metro/bus system and find the nearest church. First I must say, our apartment here is not, like many we have rented before in other great cities of the world, near a metro station. Nope! It’s fully 2 miles away on a zig-zag path through and around very, very busy streets. Street signs are rare and iPhone Navigation purely sux. Maybe in the next few days we will find a convenient bus route to the station. But hey, figuring out bus routes is a whole other conundrum!!! We found that station though. We did! We will probably hit it numerous times during the next few months. It’s called Estacion Inglesia del Carmen.

At the station, with the help of two separate Panamanians both whose English was much better than our Spanish, we used the machines to buy and load a card for metro and bus rides. We got maps too! Yaay!

Next we navigated to the Life Bridge International Church. Its services are held in a movie theatre in the very large and swanky MultiPlaza mall. Again, we would never have found the cinema in that huge mall without the help of one very diligent security guard who seemed to enjoy slowly and royally escorting us through his lovely work environment. In reality, it was not that simple. In our broken languages he thought we wanted to see a movie for today. That, he indicated was in a cinema several km away. We thought that just didn’t seem right. With the help of Google Translate, he finally got it that we were simply trying to scope out the theatre in his mall where the international church service is held so we would know where to go on Sunday. He proudly walked us there.

That done, we enjoyed a little lunch there in the mall and also could not resist buying a $50 Psycho Bunny t-shirt for Stan. No bargains here. But it’s so Psycho and he’ll look so cool!

Ok, that took all of three hours and almost 5 miles. Feeling we deserved it, we put on our suits and enjoyed reading our books, relaxing by our apartment building’s pool. The sun was fair; the air was light and breezy; the scenery was gorgeous. Could this be heaven?

Yep, we have slowed our pace a little. We have been working hard to get here and to get to know the area. But after all we are going to be here four more months. So why rush? Today about 10 am, our doorbell rang. What? We know no one. It was our housekeeping service. Ok that weekly service apparently occurs on Thursday, Jueves. We gathered our stuff and let her have the unit.

McDonald’s is only a few blocks from us. We had not eaten yet so we headed there – we still have not learned which local Panamanian food shops are good and which should be avoided . . . many are just tiny slots in strip centers with no visible health department inspection certificate. Ok, I will admit I am more adventurous than Stan when it comes to trying new types of food or food vendors. Granted his stomach is much more sensitive to spice, etc., than mine. We passed a couple of food shops today that I definitely want to try but instead we went to McDonalds for breakfast. Stan got the Desayuno Delux and I chose the DesayunoTipico. Stan’s plate was the usual McGrand plate order. . scrambled eggs, an English muffin, pancakes, hash browns and sausage. My Tipico styrofoam plate had scrambled eggs, sausage patty, some sort of crispy corn patty called a tortilla and what I think might be a yucca roll (carimanola). Whatever those things were, they tasted quite good.

Sancocho is a traditional Panamanian soup so I understand. It has a good broth, vegetables like big chunks of patatas, chayote and corn with whole pieces of tender-cooked chicken served in a big soup bowl. This dish is in my line of sight and I hope to have a bowl in the next few days.

We did a little shopping. Our apartamento had no good spatula for turning Stan’s grilled cheese sandwiches and we needed something for carrying essentials on our walks and excursions. A serviceable spatula was selected and we settled on a fanny/belly pack for Stan. For sure, fanny packs are the ultimate uncool items especially for old people but they are so helpful. I have one too. We also bought a tiny bit of Christmas decorations. Hey!! Winter is coming, Jon Snow and Christmas will arrive sooner than you think. Plus we are going to be here!! We didn’t get lights for our tiny veranda yet but we will.

Our time on the pool deck yesterday taught us the air is breezy, cooler and drier there than that on the street. Guess where we spent today’s afternoon reading, relaxing and enjoying this beautiful city.

The only other productive things we did today were practicing using the Metro/Bus App for getting around town – I don’t want to jinx us but I think we are beginning to get it. And Stan spent time investigating the best way to get to Columbia from Panama and where we might stay when we arrive in March—that job is his specialty. Meanwhile I signed us up for the 9 am service this Sunday at Life Bridge International Church held in the MultiPlaza.