Must See Places in Panama City

By Lauren Stuart

It’s no secret that the Panamá Canal is the number one tourist attraction in Panamá City.  It is, after all, one of the top man-made wonders of the world and put Panamá on the map.  However, after living and studying in Panamá for the past seven months, I’ve realized the city is home to so much more.  After you beat the crowds at the Miraflores Locks along the Panamá Canal, consider spending some time at one of these places:

Isla Taboga

Group in Isla Taboga

If you’re looking for a fun and easy day trip, Isla Taboga is a must!  Located about 20 km off the coast and known as one of the best beaches in the Panamá City area, Isla Taboga is a top destination for busy city goers looking for a quick break.  It only costs $13 for a round-trip ferry ticket, which is perfect if you’re on a budget.  Ferries leave from the Causeway at 8:30 am and 10:30 am and return at 3 pm and 5 pm every day.  However, it’s not uncommon for the ferries to sell out so make sure you get there at least an hour early.  The island hosts many great activities besides just chilling out on the beach and taking a quick dip in the refreshing water.  There are several hiking trails that take you to the top of a hill and offer incredible views.  You can also explore the adorable town that calls Isla Taboga home and if kayaking is your thing, there is a place where you can rent kayaks for only $4.  Once you work up an appetite, hit up one of the many food carts for some great food.  Or if you’re on a budget, I suggest bringing a cooler full of drinks and snacks.

Isla Taboga

Cerro Ancon

Cerro Ancon

Cerro Ancon is easily recognized for being “that hill with the giant Panamá flag."  Although well known, Cerro Ancon is unfortunately overlooked by most.  Located in Balboa, right next to the Panamá Canal Administration Building, the hill offers an easy morning hike that only takes about 2 hours.  The “trail” is actually a one way road that many people choose to drive up.  However, it is well worth the walk, trust me!  Not to mention, walking is free.  On your way up, be on the lookout for sloths hanging out in the trees above.  Once you reach the top, you are greeted by that giant Panamá flag and rewarded with incredible birds-eye views of the city skyline, Balboa, the Panamá Canal, Casco Viejo, and the Bridge of the Americas.  Once you make it back to the bottom and your stomach is growling, head to Niko’s Café, just down the street from the Administration building.  Niko’s is dirt cheap and has great Panamanian food as well as classics such as sandwiches and french fries. A whole meal including a drink and desert costs about $5 - $8.

View of Cerro Ancon 

Casco Viejo

Casco Viejo

Casco Viejo is like a European city with a flare of Latin American culture.  It’s one of the oldest neighborhoods in Panamá City and although originally considered a more dangerous area, Casco Viejo has undergone major renovations making it far safer and one of my favorite places in the city.  During the day, make sure you visit the multiple churches located in the town squares and enjoy walking through the narrow European-like streets.  If you’re looking for crafts, check out the Indian market on the walkway right along the coast.  There are many tents set up with Kuna Indians selling homemade crafts such as molas, traditional fabrics full of color.  At night, Casco Viejo transforms and the nightlife heats up.  If you’re looking for a great dinner, I suggest Casa Blanca or Restaurante Diablicos.  Casco Viejo is also home to one of the city’s best bars, Relic, and multiple clubs that will get you dancing.  If you’re looking for another incredible view, walk towards the water at night and watch as the city skyline appears at the end of a narrow cobblestone street.

Casco Viejo

Study Abroad Fair Fall 2012

We had a blast at the fair! If you couldn't make it (or just want to see our smiling faces again :p) come out to our Spring 2013 fair in February!

Throwback Thursday: Foreign Fare

Yesterday was the second edition of Throwback Thursday! Here are the scrumptious snapshots you sent in!

The next Throwback Thursday's (10/25) theme is "Goofy Globetrotters". Send in pictures of you and your friends being silly all around the world!

To send in your photos on Instagram, use #NolesAbroad in the description. You can also submit them through our Facebook page or on Twitter (@fsuip) and we'll share them throughout the day! Get those pictures ready!

Throwback Thursday #1

Yesterday was Throwback Thursday! Here are the amazing pictures our students sent in:

If you want to participate in the next Throwback Thursday (10/11), follow us on Instagram and send us your favorite pictures from your time abroad using #NolesAbroad.

Next week's theme is "Foreign Fare". Send us pictures of your favorite meal you had, you and your friends chowing down on some gelato, sitting at your favorite cafe, and anything having to do with the delicious grub you had while abroad!

A Year of Adventure

By Claire McCleskey

As the end of my senior year began to approach, I knew two things: I wanted to go to Florida State, and I wanted to study abroad at some point in my college career. I had heard of FSU’s First Year Abroad program on my very first visit to the school but I never imagined I’d be able to spend my entire first year away from home in a foreign country. I’ll never forget the day I received one of the International Programs brochures in the mail. As soon as I started to look through it, both my parents and I knew there was no way I would be able to say no to the FYA program. A few months later, I packed my bags and headed to London.

London is a great city because it has something to offer any time, any day, for any interest. The Study Centre is located close to many theatres on the West End (London’s Broadway) and we learned early on that you can get discounted tickets to shows if you go the day of, so many students took advantage of that. I took Intro to Theatre during my first semester, which had us going to at least one play a week for class, but many of us expanded our theatrical horizons beyond the class. One of my favorite shows was The Woman in Black, which I saw four times in London, and attended a screening of the film introduced by none other than Daniel Radcliffe himself.  Because London is such a central part of the European entertainment industry, many movie premieres are held there. In fact, most of them take place in Leicester Square, which is about a five-minute walk from the Study Centre. One of the coolest events to ever happen there was the red carpet premiere for The Dark Knight Rises. My friends and I camped out to get spots along the carpet and managed to see all the stars, and even get Anne Hathaway and Tom Hardy’s autograph! But it wasn’t just movies and theatre surrounding our home in the world-renowned Bloomsbury District—a million things would be happening every day in every field imaginable. One weekend could be a relaxing one spent picnicking in St. James’ or Hyde Park, the next could be the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee where one day you watch the Queen and company float down the Thames and the next you see Paul McCartney singing Let It Be in front of her Buckingham Palace home. Another week might be London’s Fashion Week, which I took advantage of in the fall and spring, and the week after you might head to Stonehenge and Bath. 

There were countless opportunities in London, but the most unique one I had was the chance to be in the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the Olympics. My friend and I heard about the auditions and signed up immediately. Much to our surprise, we both received a callback. Even more to our surprise, we were both asked to be in the Ceremonies. I wasn’t able to do it because there would have been too many scheduling conflicts with the classes I was taking, but my friend did participate. While I wish I could have been in it too, it’s cool to say I had the opportunity to be in them. Watching the Olympics--which happened just days after I returned from London--made me homesick, but I was swelling with pride knowing that my friend was a part of the ceremonies. 

While in London, I actually completed all of my gen ed requirements except for one science class, and I ended up having as many credit hours as a junior by the end of my freshman year. The Broad Curriculum classes abroad are great, because they give you a really different experience than what you would get in Tallahassee. For example, if I hadn’t studied abroad, I probably would have taken a biology class with 300 kids as my lab science. Instead, I took an archeology class with 20 other students (my largest class by far) where we spent half the class at a museum or digging up the shore of the Thames. During one of the summer sessions, I decided to branch out from the typical Broad Curriculum courses usually taken by First Year Abroad students. I applied to participate in a program focused on documentary filmmaking in Britain, and the two courses I took as part of that program are the most interesting classes I’ve ever taken. Before the class started, I’d never so much as touched a real camera. By the end of the course I had made two commercial parodies and documentary about Abbey Road, filmed on location. That’s one of the greatest advantages to studying abroad—the city becomes your textbook.


When you study abroad, you form a unique bond with your classmates. No one will ever fully understand the experience you had together unless they were there. I made so many great friends studying abroad, but those of us who were together for a full year will always have an inseparable bond. It’s nice to look back at photos of us in London watching an FSU football game huddled around one tiny computer screen, and compare it to pictures of us at our first football game together in Tallahassee, or to see pictures of us on the London Eye at the start of our time in London and see that we took almost the exact same picture on our last day in the city together. Pictures like that make me really appreciate my friends from London because they show just how much we’ve been through together.

While I loved every minute I spent in London, it was also great to get out of the city and see the rest of the world! The Study Centre organized a number of day trips and weekend trips to places like the Highlands in Scotland, Liverpool, Bath, Stonehenge, and Wales. We also took advantage of how easy (and relatively cheap!) it is to fly from London to other parts of Europe. During my time there, I traveled to Venice (twice), Barcelona, Nice, Marseilles, Cannes, Paris, Amsterdam, Bruges, and more. And I got to do it with my closest friends. If there’s anything better than travelling the world, it’s travelling the world with your best friends.

Can You Dig it? Archaeology in Tuscany

By Aaron Brown

The allure of Italy is well-known. Every year droves of tourists flock to her major cities – Rome, Florence, Venice – seeking to experience for themselves the country’s fabulous art, food, and fashion, to savor a few days of la dolce vita before moving on to their next destination. People travel to Italy to relax and enjoy themselves. They go for pleasure and are always surprised to hear my reason for going each summer: to perform strenuous manual labor under the Tuscan sun (don’t be misled by the book) and not get paid for doing any of it. Folks who don’t understand my motives sometimes think I’m crazy, but I go for the experience – the opportunity to dig in Italy. As a student of classical archaeology, what I’ve gained from excavating at FSU’s field school at Cetamura del Chianti has far exceeded any minor discomforts felt along the way. My time at Cetamura has been extremely rewarding, offering me a foundation in my field and opportunities to pursue my own research queries. 

After I tell someone that I dig in Italy and the person asks me if I do the same sort of thing as Indiana Jones (answer: not at all!), the next question is always, “Have you found anything interesting?” My first summer I found very little by way of artifacts aside from a pair of ca. 1980 sunglasses dropped by a lost German hiker. We did, however, observe a peculiar change in soil composition within my trench that year. Along one side of the unit, a curved cut had been made in the surrounding bedrock and filled in with a dense clay pack in antiquity. Given the semi-circular nature of the cut and the presence of the water-retaining clay, we hypothesized that a water containment structure might lie in the adjacent unit. I returned the following summer to investigate the neighboring area. What we found was a large, roughly circular stone-lined cistern or well! The cavity at the center of the structure had evidently been filled in with stones and discarded roof tile at some point (likely when it failed to adequately collect and/or store water), and this is where we focused our attentions that second summer. In order to get to the bottom of some of our most pressing questions – what was its precise function, when was it in use, who had access to its contents, etc. – we had to get to the bottom of the cavity!

The hypothesized cistern under excavation in 2011

The western portion of the structure, revealed in 2012

While we didn’t reach the bottom of the structure in 2011, we did learn a great deal about its form and method of construction. In the process of doing so, we also succeeded in expanding the map of Cetamura. Yet there were still so many unanswered questions. I had to return in 2012. My third summer I set to work uncovering an unexcavated corner of the structure. My goals were to complete a detailed map of the structure (that took into account the unexcavated portion), determine the extent of the clay pack observed in 2010, and see if we couldn’t come up with a better interpretation for its use at the site. In general we met these objectives. We completed the map of the structure and proved that the clay pack continued around all sides of the structure. There is now little doubt that the structure was designed for the provisioning of water. To clarify its relationship to the nearby sanctuary and site as a whole, more work will have to be done around and, especially, within the structure. For the time being, questions of access and usage will have to remain unclear. We also remain uncertain about the date of construction and time of infilling. The cavity at the center of the structure is likely to contain our best evidence for how it was used and when it was in operation. The work of future seasons will concentrate on the center of the structure.