The reason we took this cruise

 Once in the lake, we were told where to go for our excursion and waited in line to show our ticket, to wait in line to get a sticker, to wait in line to be called to board a tinder, to wait in line to board a tinder to wait in line to disembark the tinder, to wait in a bus to get clearance to leave and I think that it could 

 have gone easier.  By the time the tinder had to go back to the dock to get the wheelchair that they had forgotten for one of the passengers, I was at my breaking point and it just got worse from there.  But I digress into a rant of course…Anyway, we were finally on the road to 

 Panama City on the Pacific ocean which was just 50 miles across Panama from Colon where we started.  We did a walking tour of Colonial Panama which is being restored heavily and was not much fun to look at, but will be beautiful in a couple of years.  The modern skyline of Panama City against this 

 backdrop was pretty awe inspiring and it’s amazing the traffic and noise and poverty in this city.  There is money coming in from the canal, but they are expanding the canal and that’s taking a lot of money.  Our tour guide pointed out that Panama doesn’t have much in the way of exports besides a canal.  We went to the Amador Corridor and saw the amazing prices on duty free liquor there, but didn’t have time to buy and counted on their 

 being a second one at the Pier in Colon.  We saw the Bridge of the Americas and the Centenniel bridge and stopped at the Miraflores locks to see a boat go through the locks.  A sailboat that had been in front of our boat at Gatun locks was just exiting when we arrived and they said the next boats wouldn’t be for 45 minutes, but we only had 30 minutes here. 

 We’re not missing those boats people.  So, we all just stayed to watch the freighter that had been in front of us on the port side and the cruise ship that had been behind us on the port side go through the locks side by side.  It was awesome and only marred by the fact that my new rechargeable camera cannot apparently work from 6 am to 4pm nonstop.  So, John would

stand at the rail, while I would charge the camera at a socket, and bring it back to him at the rail to catch a couple more shots.  It’s a good things that these locks take some time to operate and I now know why they speed up all the images of ships going  through the locks.  But we got to see it all from being on the ship in the locks at Gatun from the Caribbean Sea to the ships around us coming out from Miraflores into the Pacific.  Awesome day at the canal.