Panama Canal Transit Penthouse Style

Tuesday, October 9th and it's the day we transit the Panama Canal. Lucky us, Bonnie, Rich and Merce invited us to breakfast and to view the morning transit from their Penthouse stateroom. While some passengers got up at 5:30am or even earlier as we approached the Canal, Randy and I didn't make it out of bed until 7am.



The movie below is a very tiny excerpt of our wonderful morning.


We were warmly welcomed by Bonnie, Rich and Merce with a glass of fine rose sparkling wine. We immediately went out on the deck since it was a beautiful morning. Some of the photos make the weather look like it was foggy, but it was a clear day with blue skies for the whole transit. Unfortunately we have a tendency to forget to wipe the camera lens periodically which means it fogs up now and then from the humidity.



Since the breakfast menu for the suites are upgraded over family view cabins like ours, I was finally able to order my Yogurt granola parfait (2 different flavors of yogurt layered with granola and fresh berries) that I love, and an egg Fritata. While I don't recall what everyone else had, I do remember waffles, chocolate croissants and plenty of other goodies on the table, all of which was laid out and served by George their butler.



We couldn't have asked for a better day for going through the Canal or better company to spend it with. Bonnie had really studied up on the Canal before the trip so whenever we missed what the announcer was saying, she was able to fill in the blanks.



A couple more photos of Randy roughing it (grin) on the Penthouse deck.



The morning with Bonnie, Merce and Rich just flew by, it was so interesting and comfortable. When it became hotter as the day went on we could duck into the Penthouse living room to cool off and watch the canal from their huge panoramic ceiling to floor windows.



We left the penthouse around 1pm and went to get a bite of lunch upstairs on deck 10. We then returned to our stateroom to view the final part of the transit from our own balcony.

Early afternoon the passengers that had shore excursions at the Panama Canal left the ship. Since it was our first time experiencing the transit of the Panama Canal we stayed aboard.





As we were going through one section of the Gatun Locks we looked across to shore and passengers who had taken one of the ship shore tours were at a observation area and waving at the Infinity as she passed. While Randy and I held on to our hats (earlier the wind had already blown mine downstairs to the Penthouse deck where Rich grabbed it before it went overboard) I told him that it looked like one group was trying to get our attention over all the other people on the aft of the ship and sure enough it was John, Stephanie and Gary, friends from our Cruise Critic roll call.

The film clip below is the ship exiting one of the locks in the late afternoon.

Around 6:30pm the Infinity reached Cristobal, Panama where we docked at the pier to pick up the passengers that had taken the shore excursions and also for some shopping.While I was looking forward to the shopping at Cristobal Pier where the Captain had been gracious enough to schedule an extra hour, we had a special dinner to attend that evening that would cut short my shopping adventure.