Here is a great article by Kelsey Keith for Yahoo Travel.
The Panama City Skyline. (Photo: Kelsey Keith)
By Kelsey Keith
Now that Tulum is what it is (beautiful, laid back, not terribly far from New York City airports, and therefore overrun with hip city folk looking for a stress-free getaway), would-be vacationers are fixated on finding the next Riviera Maya. Panama is being floated as just that.
Lay of the land
It’s a five-hour direct flight from New York City to Panama City, a home base from which to explore a handful of beach locales and the inland jungle. Don’t forgo the charms of Panama City’s Casco Viejo though: It looks like a mix between Havana and New Orleans and is experiencing a real-time resurgence centered around American Trade Hotel, a new hotel run by the Ace Hotel group in partnership with the local real estate development firm Conservatorio. Casco, which is where Panama City was centered following the sack of the original town in 1671 by English pirate Henry Morgan, was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1997.