Panama City, Panama

The moment you clear customs at Tocumen International, someone in a polo shirt will offer to be your taxi driver, no meter, no posted price, just a friendly smile and a car waiting outside the terminal doors. Do not go with him. Walk instead to the official taxi stand inside, where fares are posted clearly: about 30 dollars to central Panama City, 35 to Casco Viejo or Albrook, 40 to Amador. Confirm the number with the driver before the car moves. This single habit saves more money and hassle than anything else in this guide.

The city in two eras, side by side

Panama City is really two cities occupying the same skyline. There is the glass-and-steel financial district that looks like Miami got dropped into Central America, and there is Casco Viejo, the 17th-century peninsula of colonial buildings, church ruins, and narrow streets that was itself built as a replacement for the original Panama Viejo settlement after pirates burned it down in 1671. Walking between the two takes you past both eras in under twenty minutes, and the contrast is the actual attraction, not just the individual buildings.

Panama Viejo, the ruins of that original city, sits east of downtown and gets a fraction of the visitors Casco Viejo does, largely because it requires more imagination among the stone foundations rather than intact colonial facades. It is worth an hour, especially for the cathedral tower you can still climb, but do not expect Casco Viejo’s polish.

Miraflores Locks, and how to time it right

The Miraflores Visitor Center runs 8am to 5pm daily, about twenty minutes from downtown, and entry costs 20 dollars for non-resident adults, 10 for children, covering four observation decks, a museum, and an IMAX film. The detail most guides skip: ships transit in waves, generally northbound from the Pacific between 9 and 11am, then southbound in the afternoon between 2 and 5pm. Go in the morning on a weekday if you can. The light is better for photos and the tour buses have not arrived yet. A taxi or rideshare there runs 12 to 15 dollars each way, which is cheap enough that padding it into an expensive bundled canal tour rarely makes sense unless you specifically want the guided narration.

Eating in Casco Viejo without settling for tourist food

Panama City’s food scene has genuinely leveled up in the last several years, and Casco Viejo is where most of it concentrates. Fonda Lo Que Hay gets credited by locals as the restaurant that kicked off the city’s culinary renaissance, serving bold reworkings of Panamanian street food rather than watered-down versions for tourists. Caleta, in a restored colonial building with water views, runs tasting menus in the 85 to 120 dollar range built around Panamanian ingredients treated with real technique. If you want the single hardest reservation in the country, Donde Jose seats only sixteen people a night at an open counter where the chef prepares a ten-course tasting menu, priced 95 to 130 dollars, directly in front of you. None of these are places you walk into on a Saturday night without booking, so message ahead, and note that WhatsApp gets a faster response from most Panama City restaurants than email ever will.

For something unpretentious, Cafe Coca-Cola has been serving since 1875 and holds the odd distinction of being the only business in the world legally allowed to use the Coca-Cola name without being owned by the company. It is a plain, old-fashioned diner, and that is exactly the point after a few days of tasting menus.

My opinion: skip the restaurants directly on Casco Viejo’s main plaza, they are priced for the view rather than the food, and walk two or three blocks inland where the same quality costs noticeably less and the room is not filled entirely with other tourists.

Getting around after the airport

Beyond that first taxi ride, Panama City’s Metro subway is clean, cheap, and underused by visitors who default to taxis out of habit. A prepaid Metro card costs little and covers both the subway and connecting Metrobus routes, including a useful link from Albrook Mall’s bus terminal toward Tocumen if you ever need the budget route back to the airport, though budget on an extra hour compared to a direct taxi. Uber and the local app Cabify both operate in the city and tend to run cheaper than metered taxis for cross-town trips, but note that rideshare pickup at the airport itself is restricted to a designated area outside the arrivals hall, not the curb, so budget a few extra minutes to walk there. Also confirm your Uber driver actually ends the trip in the app after dropoff. Travelers have reported meters left running after arrival, generating charges for a ride that already finished.

Beyond the city

Boquete, up in the cool highlands of Chiriqui province, is where Panama’s specialty coffee actually grows, and touring a working plantation there gives a far more grounded sense of the industry than any cafe tasting flight in the capital. It is a flight or a long drive from Panama City, so it works better as its own multi-day trip than a day excursion. Closer in, Bocas del Toro’s scattered islands offer the swimming and snorkeling that Panama City itself, sitting on a working industrial bay, genuinely lacks. The Amador Causeway, connecting several small islands just outside downtown, is the easier substitute if your schedule will not stretch to Bocas, offering a genuine sea breeze and skyline views without a flight.

Practical notes

The US dollar circulates alongside the Panamanian balboa at a fixed one-to-one rate, which simplifies budgeting for American travelers considerably, though small businesses sometimes run short on coins so keep some smaller bills handy. Spanish is the everyday language, and English fluency is inconsistent outside hotels and the main tourist restaurants, so a handful of basic phrases go further here than in more heavily touristed Latin American capitals. December through April is the dry season and the more comfortable stretch for walking Casco Viejo’s uneven cobblestones, while the wetter months bring dramatic but predictable afternoon downpours rather than all-day rain, so plan outdoor time for mornings if you visit between May and November.