It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood

Well, I'm sorry Mr Rogers, but it isn’t really. It’s grey and raining again, which somewhat matches my mood.

But I’ve been quiet for a couple of days so I thought I’d post a little description of life here. The hotel the large and somewhat characterless. The rather nice pool is unfortunately useless a lot of the time because of almost constant thunderstorms.  All the floors are made of marble, which bearing in mind the near constant rain, means that guests are constantly sliding and falling ingraciously  on their butts. But the hotel does have the distinction of hosting the Panamanian football (soccer) team and their wives/girlfriends – the latter being extremely glamorous and anatomically highly improbable. There is a little bar/sushi restaurant in the lobby which is a favourite hanging out spot. I’m slowly working my way through their impressive selection of martinis, whilst we catch up on various football games (Congratulations England on beating Sweden ! That’s going to cause a rift between two branches of my family for certain). The time that can be spent in the sushi bar is however limited by their near polar air conditioning – there are lots of bad geek jokes about “winter is coming”, but the delegates from Alaska can be found there nearly all the time as they find it quite balmy.

Immediately outside the hotel door we have the “mola mola” shop – selling traditional Panamanian  hand sewn quilts. A traditional shop run by a little enthusiastic, exuberant jewish lady from New York (I know this because she mentions it every time I go in there). Several friends who I know who collect animal-oriented items will luck out with gifts from trip thanks to the mola shop – no cows or sheep so far though.

Behind this shop is the internet café, which is next to the Moulin Rouge strip club which offers girls “and rooms”. There is a running joke that this is where the Austrian delegation is housed there, due to them managing to pick hotels when the IWC was in Japan and Korea, that turned out to be love motels/brothels. Next to the strip club, is the tattoo parlour and next to that, and above the rubber/leather lingerie shop is the cutest little vegetarian restaurant. For $3 you can get a slap-up meal  of wholeseome veggie fare. The also hold classes in the back of the shop – so it’s very worthy all round.

The vegetarian restaurant situated above the sex shop

Past the big jumbotron TV screen (which is a great place to watch football games featuring Panama- the streets get filled with locals watching in rapt awe and the community atmosphere is amazing) and a  block to the east is the “ismuth” brew pub. The delegates from the whale and dolphin conservation society and in the hotel right next door, which makes it a very convenient meeting place. They only brew four of their own beers, most of which are rather on the light side for me, but the “amber” and “dark” are quite tasty. They have a good selection of imported beers too. The location next to the brew pub is uncharacteristically  close to the meeting venue for the WDCS crowd. They’re usually located several miles away, often in a nice B&B,but far enough away that they have to trek several miles carrying papers and computers every day in usually hot, humid conditions, up hills both ways, at the crack of dawn, but we don’t hear them complain do we (best said in a northern English accent)?

Two other places of note: El Patio, a Mexican restaurant with an eclectic range of decorations from tacky angels, to whips, to flower pots, to an impressive range of day of the dead figurines, so that it looks  a little  like a set  in “the corpse bride”. Decent Mexican food, but some of the largest margueritas I’ve ever had the pleasure to drink. Next to that is a Mediterranean restaurant, which has to be one of the best I’ve been to for a while. Very friendly to our high vegetarian quotient group, with on of the best crème brulees I’ve ever tasted (and I’ve tasted a lot) , and an excellent wine menu.  But one of the best things are the big comfy, swivel chairs. They are like the Captain’s chair in Star Trek. Ridiculously comfy, and great to decadently slump in after a bottle or two of good wine & food.

The restaurant: El Patio

It’s getting close to meeting time, so I should signoff. Adios amigos.