Today when we disembarked we took a tour to the city of Panama of an old Monastery, a Museum that showed some history of the area and an Emerald Jewelry Manufacturing company. The Jewelry manufacturing company has an arrangement with the local museums that allowed them to borrow old artifacts that had been discovered and to reproduce these elaborate pieces. They kept them for a couple of days for measurements and pictures and usually returned them within about 48 hours. Keeping history alive!
The monastery (the guide called it a monastery but the nuns ran it? So maybe it was a nunnery?!) was something like 600 years old and had obviously seen better times, but considering there was still much of it in very good shape. The government was also trying to preserve the structures.
The Jewellery company had a catwalk around the top of the manufacturing floor so we could see them actually produce the jewelry. At the end of the tour we could look through their company store which had many very nice items and then upon leaving they gave each one of us a little gift bag of local items including coffee, alcohol, and discount coupons.
We finished the tour by driving back to Colon. We found both cities (Colon and Panama) to be very dirty, there were nice areas but especially near the ports both cities were very run down and not places to go for a walk about by yourself at any time.
We arrived back on board and thought it was a good time to go back to our new favourite bar for another Gin and Tonic, mmmm tasted great. While there I observed one of the bartenders making martinis in a very unique way!Following tonights dinner we went to the after dinner show expecting a 60's show (right up our alley!), only to learn that the performers could not get here due to flight issues. The ships crew and the cast of actors put together their own show on short notice. They did a very good job.
Off to bed in preparation for Cartagena, Columbia tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment