Fog on the wine . . .

After an early start, our flight from London was delayed by fog in Madrid.  We set off an hour late but had plenty of time to make our connecting flight to Panama City.  The ten and a half hour flight on Iberia was very good mainly because of the food and drink.  We were deciding what to chose from the  menu of five starters, when we realised it was a tapas style selection of all of them. A choice of three mains followed and then pudding all with copious amounts of wine.  After snoozes and films we found we'd landed.

We arrived at the Deville Hotel at 7pm local time (we are 5 hours behind) after having had a very interesting transfer where Andy our driver gave out lots of snippets.  For example, Panama's economy is very strong, based on the canal and tourism; there is no army and four women to every man; it is the second biggest duty free zone after Singapore and people love to shop (the shops are measured in miles and thousands).

We decided to eat in the hotel bar and had a selection of hot tapas with two large jugs of white sangria which were very refreshing and induced a sound nights sleep.

Our first morning in the city was disappointing because all we could see was a multitude of high rise buildings (many currently under construction), which all seemed to be banks.  We walked down to the marina having to negotiate crossing two four lane highways but when we got there, there was a dearth of much needed bars.  The weather is very hot and so we decided on a cab back to our hotel.  After a brief respite, we headed off in the other direction and found where all the action was.  Lunch was in Beirut where for $14 dollars we shared a very substantial mezze ($140 BOO luncheon vouchers remain).

We are now back in our hotel and having spent some time trying to master the blog again, RM has mustered an ice bucket and I can hear the pop of a cork as I type!