Thursday, October 10, 2013

Big Ships: At the Copa, Copa Cabana

Sorry I got that song stuck in your head.  Now you can share my misery. 

Our flight didn't leave until the afternoon, so we had plenty of time to sleep in, have a leisurely morning, and then make our way across Long Island to JFK.  We had forgotten to bring nighttime PullUps for Big D (he's daytime potty trained, but not nighttime).  Even though he successfully stayed dry overnight at the HI Express, he requested that we pick some up for the rest of the trip, so Daddy had time to walk out to the store and do that.  Crisis averted!

We flew Copa airlines from JFK-PTY.  Copa is a Panamanian airline, but they were formerly almost completely integrated with Continental.  So now, they are almost completely integrated with United.  And by integrated, I mean they share a frequent flyer program, which makes our status good.  The result is that we got complimentary upgrades on this flight and the flight to Montevideo.

The plane was a brand-shiny-new 737-800 in the "sky" configuration (all together now - oooooooooooo).  The business class seats were great with tons of legroom, footrests, and decent in-seat IFE.  The set up greatly surpassed our expectations based on reviews of the old configuration, as did the food quality.  C really enjoyed her rice, and D was all about the vanilla ice cream for dessert.

We were delayed out of JFK for goodness knows why.  While we were waiting, D was playing with a new Panamanian friend at the gate, named Valentina. A big Delta jet was taking off and the girl's mom told the kids to look up. Daddy asked D 'what kind of plane is that?'. D took one glance and said '40-47' (his name for a 747). He was right, of course, and the girl's mom was amazed!  She said, "I just thought he would say 'airplane'... Wow! That's amazing!"  Daddy didn't bother to tell her that D would have said 40-47 for anything from a Cessna to an A380....

All in all the flight went really well, especially thanks to the upgrades.

Once in Panama City, we picked up our rental car, and due to the late hour and lack of traffic, sped across the city.  Our hotel was the Country Inn and Suites Amador, situated just at the Pacific entrance to the canal.  Due to our Carlson Gold status, we got upgraded to a canal view master suite.  This was absolutely phenomenal, as we not only got to watch the ships coming in to transit the canal from our own private balcony, but we got to put the kids to sleep in their own room (yay pull out couch for D), and have some adult relaxation time on our own. 

This is, incredibly enough, starting to feel a lot more like vacation and a little less like work with these little peanuts.

No comments:

Post a Comment