One Perfect Day in Panama City: Monkeys, Miraflores & a Birthday Dinner
We had one full day in Panama City. We could have tried to see everything. Instead, we picked three things we actually wanted to do and gave ourselves enough time to enjoy them.
That turned out to be exactly the right decision.
Our day included a morning boat ride on the Panama Canal in search of monkeys, an afternoon watching ships pass through the Miraflores Locks, and an evening wandering Casco Viejo before an outstanding birthday dinner.
Three completely different experiences.
And despite doing all three in one day, we never felt rushed.
That may be the most important part of this story.
Our Panama City Day
We weren't staying in Panama City itself. Our Airbnb was about 2½ hours away, so this was going to be a long day regardless.
That made it tempting to start piling things onto the itinerary.
"Well, if we're driving all the way into Panama City..."
That's how a good day turns into an endurance event.
Instead, we built the day around three anchors:
a morning monkey boat tour
the Miraflores Locks and Panama Canal Visitor Center
Casco Viejo and Gina's birthday dinner at Kaandela
There were roughly 20-minute drives between the major stops, and we deliberately left breathing room between them.
No stopwatch. No race across town. No tourism decathlon.
We could have spent weeks exploring Panama City and still missed things.
We weren't trying to.
We wanted to enjoy our day.
Morning on the Panama Canal
Our first adventure put us directly onto the Panama Canal.
And almost immediately, the scale of the place became apparent.
You can read about the canal. You can look at maps. You can watch documentaries.
Then you're sitting in a relatively small boat while an ocean-going ship passes nearby.
That's different.
The canal isn't merely a tourist attraction. It's a working maritime highway.
Commercial vessels, cruise ships and smaller boats are all using the same enormous transportation system while tourists like us are bouncing around looking for monkeys.
For someone who has spent his career around ships, that made the morning even more interesting.
But the ships weren't the primary reason we were there.
We had monkeys to find.
The Monkey Boat Tour
The boat left the open canal and began nosing into quieter areas along the shoreline.
Suddenly the industrial side of Panama disappeared.
Jungle took over.
The guides knew where to look and maneuvered us close enough to the trees that monkeys began appearing almost directly beside the boat.
This wasn't a zoo exhibit viewed through glass.
We were sitting in their neighborhood.
The experience was close enough to be exciting without turning into some manufactured wildlife encounter. The monkeys did what monkeys apparently do when boats full of humans arrive.
They investigated.
And occasionally negotiated for snacks.
It was fun, relaxed and completely different from what we'd be doing only a few hours later.
That contrast became one of my favorite things about the day.
From Monkeys to Miraflores
After the boat tour, we drove roughly 20 minutes to the Miraflores Locks.
Parking was easy and plentiful during our visit.
One thing worth knowing before buying tickets online: there are different admission prices for Panamanian residents and international visitors.
The local price is clearly labeled, but naturally the lower number catches your eye first.
Buyer beware.
Identification is required for the resident rate. When we visited, the difference was only around $3, so accidentally selecting the wrong ticket wasn't going to destroy the vacation budget, but it's worth paying attention before clicking Buy.
There are also several visitor options, so check what is included rather than simply choosing the cheapest number on the screen.
Miraflores Locks: The Engineering Is the Attraction
Our visit included the IMAX presentation, which ran about 45 minutes and was narrated by Morgan Freeman.
Afterward, we explored on our own and eventually made our way to the observation deck.
This is where I could have stayed for quite a while.
Actually, we did.
We spent about an hour watching ships transit the locks.
Part of my fascination comes from having done a narrowboat trip in England. The basic physics of a lock aren't mysterious. Water goes in. Water goes out. Boats rise and fall.
But scale that idea up enough to move ocean-going ships between two oceans and it becomes extraordinary.
And remember when the original canal was engineered.
No computer modeling.
No CAD software.
No giant monitor displaying a 3D simulation.
A tremendous amount of the science behind this was worked out with pencils, paper, surveying equipment and mathematics.
Then people actually had to build the thing.
Standing there makes the achievement feel much larger than reading about it.
When Professionals Make Something Difficult Look Easy
The shiphandling fascinated me just as much as the engineering.
From the observation deck, a large ship moving through the locks can look almost effortless.
I've heard some version of that throughout my career:
"Wow. You make that look easy."
Yeah.
That's because we know what we're doing.
Good shiphandling often looks uneventful to someone watching from shore. That's precisely the point.
There were occasional announcements explaining what was happening at Miraflores, but understandably they didn't get deeply into the how and why.
A couple near us started discussing one of the ships and guessing what was happening.
Gina would quietly ask me:
"Is that right?"
"What kind of ship is that?"
"Why are they doing that?"
I had answers.
Eventually Gina mentioned that I'm the Chief Harbor Pilot at Kings Bay.
Essentially:
He drives ships.
And just like that, I became the Shell Answer Man for our little corner of the observation deck.
It was fun.
Then the maritime universe added one more wrinkle.
One of the ships coming through was a vessel I had actually worked with earlier in my career.
Thousands of miles from home, standing on the Panama Canal, and there goes an old acquaintance.
Six degrees of separation, maritime edition.
One Small Piece of Advice for American Visitors
There's another part of visiting the Panama Canal that has nothing to do with ticket prices or opening hours.
Be a good guest.
Many Americans of a certain age remember when the United States controlled the Panama Canal and when control was transferred to Panama.
The complete history is considerably more complicated than:
"We built it, then gave it away."
A travel article isn't the place to unpack the geopolitical landscape of the late 1970s, and you don't need a history lecture before visiting Miraflores.
You should understand one thing, though.
The Panama Canal is a tremendous source of national pride.
Panamanians operate it. Panama undertook its enormous modern expansion, financed through the canal's own revenues and financing rather than some giant American taxpayer-funded construction project.
So standing at Miraflores and loudly announcing:
"I remember when we gave this thing back. Terrible deal."
probably isn't your finest opening line.
You are a guest in someone else's country.
You don't have to agree with everyone you meet. You don't need to rewrite history.
Just don't needlessly insult something your hosts are enormously proud of.
Being a good ambassador costs nothing.
Into Casco Viejo
From Miraflores, it was another roughly 20-minute drive into Casco Viejo.
This part was slightly more stressful.
Not because the drive itself was particularly difficult, but because Gina isn't a huge fan of crowds.
And we had accidentally selected an interesting evening to visit.
It was her birthday.
It was also Maundy Thursday.
Panama has a large Catholic population, and there were a lot of people out.
The narrow one-way streets were crowded with pedestrians spilling from sidewalks toward the road. We slowly threaded our way through until we found a parking garage and happily abandoned the car for a while.
Then we started walking.
And Casco Viejo immediately became fascinating.
A Neighborhood Changing One Building at a Time
The contrasts were startling.
We'd pass an old building in severe disrepair.
There was poverty. There were homeless people. Some scenes were genuinely heartbreaking.
Then you'd walk another hundred feet.
Fresh whitewash.
New windows.
Restored balconies.
A streetside café.
Two women sipping espresso martinis.
At one point we saw a building that practically captured the entire neighborhood in a single structure.
Part of it looked as though it were falling apart.
Another section had already been beautifully renovated.
Old Panama and new Panama weren't separated by neighborhoods.
Sometimes they were separated by a wall.
We wandered, window-shopped and talked with shop owners.
Despite the crowds we'd encountered driving in, once we were away from that bottleneck the evening became surprisingly relaxed.
Which was fortunate, because we had deliberately arrived early.
Dinner wasn't quite ready for us.
And that's when we met Luis.
Sometimes Great Service Starts Before the Restaurant Opens
We had intentionally chosen Kaandela for Gina's birthday dinner.
The chef's tasting menu appealed to me, the regular menu appealed to Gina, the reviews were excellent, and it put us exactly where we wanted to spend the evening rather than back among the modern towers on the other side of the city.
It had also received a thumbs-up from Randy and Wando.
Good enough for us.
We reached the restaurant a little early. Gina needed a restroom, and we figured we'd see whether they could seat us ahead of our reservation.
They weren't open yet.
Luis, the manager, greeted us anyway.
He let Gina use the restroom.
Then, instead of simply telling us to come back later, he recommended a nearby hotel with a rooftop bar where we could have a pre-dinner cocktail.
Nice suggestion.
Except Luis didn't stop there.
He walked us there.
He took us through an unmarked side entrance, into the elevator, and all the way to the rooftop.
Then he found a particular server, introduced us, mentioned that it was Gina's birthday and made sure we had good seats with a view.
"Take your time. Your table will be ready."
That's hospitality.
An Unexpected Rooftop Cocktail
The rooftop was at the Central Hotel Panama, overlooking the tiled roofs, church towers and distant Panama City skyline.
Our server asked what we liked.
Gina wanted something frozen, fruity and made with local rum.
Easy enough.
I usually drink an Old Fashioned.
He recommended making mine with Ron Abuelo 12-year Panamanian rum.
I accepted the professional advice.
That turned out to be financially dangerous.
A bottle was subsequently purchased and transported home, where it currently resides on my bar.
For medicinal purposes only, naturally.
We had excellent service, a beautiful view and absolutely nowhere we needed to be until Luis was ready for us.
Eventually we wandered back toward Kaandela.
Birthday Dinner at Kaandela
Luis greeted us when we returned and asked how the drinks had been.
Our table was ready.
When making the reservation, we'd specifically requested seating where we could watch the chefs work.
That turned dinner into part meal, part show.
But not the show you might imagine.
There was no screaming.
No frantic Gordon Ramsay theater.
No kitchen chaos.
The room was surprisingly quiet.
Organized.
Deliberate.
Seamless.
Watching the kitchen work was impressive precisely because so little of the effort was visible.
There's that professional thing again.
When people really know what they're doing, difficult things can look remarkably simple.
The Chef's Tasting Menu
I ordered the chef's tasting menu, and we shared it.
Gina ordered steak.
Each tasting course arrived with an explanation of what we were eating and how it had been prepared.
The menu moved through ingredients and flavors that felt distinctly connected to Panama rather than merely being expensive food that could have been served in any major city.
There were seafood, pork, rice, tropical fruit and other local influences presented in creative ways.
Everything we tried was excellent.
And the pacing was equally good.
Courses arrived when they should.
Water glasses were quietly handled.
Someone appeared when we needed something and disappeared when we didn't.
Service was attentive without becoming intrusive.
That's harder to pull off than it sounds.
A Birthday Without the Birthday Circus
The staff knew it was Gina's birthday.
Thankfully, Kaandela did not respond by dimming the lights, banging a drum and assembling twelve employees to perform some restaurant version of Happy Birthday while everyone in the room stared at us.
This was a nice restaurant.
They treated it that way.
People simply wished her a happy birthday.
Politely.
Sincerely.
And at the end of dinner, they brought her a complimentary birthday dessert.
It was exactly right.
Nothing kitschy.
Nothing forced.
Just a small gesture at the end of an exceptional meal.
One Last Walk
Dinner was over.
But we weren't quite ready to leave Casco Viejo.
So we walked down toward the waterfront.
No destination.
No attraction waiting for us.
No Google Maps route.
Just a walk.
The buildings were illuminated, the air had cooled and the waterfront was quiet.
We talked about the day.
About the trip.
And about how a vacation that had started with a fairly rapid change of plans from Cuba had turned into a pretty remarkable week.
We counted our blessings.
Then reality eventually tapped us on the shoulder.
We still had roughly 2 to 2½ hours of driving ahead of us.
In the dark.
So after another 15 minutes or so, we retrieved the car and headed home.
The drive was easy.
And a comfortable bed was waiting.
The Best Part Was What We Didn't Do
Looking back, we could easily build a much longer list of things we didn't see in Panama City.
We didn't tour every museum.
We didn't visit every historic building.
We didn't race through a checklist of the city's "10 Must-See Attractions."
We didn't spend the day trying to reproduce somebody else's perfect Panama City itinerary.
We took a monkey boat ride.
We spent an hour watching ships transit one of the world's great engineering achievements.
We wandered Casco Viejo.
We drank Panamanian rum overlooking the rooftops.
And we had an exceptional birthday dinner.
That was enough.
More than enough, actually.
We never felt rushed.
We had two roughly 20-minute drives between our three main activities and plenty of time around them. If something had interested us longer, we could have stayed.
We weren't checking boxes.
We were traveling.
There's a difference.
You could explore Panama City for weeks.
Maybe someday we will.
But for this particular day, we did exactly what we wanted to do.
And we were quite content not keeping up with the Joneses.