My Road to Steemfest - Physical Road

Hi all,

Once again I'm back with another awesome Steemfest free write idea, and this week's topic was brought to us by my namemate or namegänger (I don't know if there is a word for people who have the same name), @eveuncovered.

My physical road to Steemfest is quite a long one, and takes more than one day. This is because I live in Panama, but to make things even more complicated, on a small island in Panama. Here's a map for you to get a better picture of what I mean.

This is Panama:

and this is where I live:

So I have 2 choices here:

• Option number 1: I can either take a 30 minute boat ride to mainland, take a taxi to the bus station, and then take an 11-hour bus ride to Panama City. From there I'd have to take a 30 minute taxi or Uber ride to the airport and then my journey can begin.

• Option number 2: This one is much more comfortable and quicker, but of course more expensive. I could fly from Bocas del Toro directly to Panama City in only 50 minutes, and save myself the headache of a freezing night bus through the mountains. Of course, only if our one and only airline Air Panama decides not to delay any flights this time. They just love doing that, or sometimes they just cancel them all together and you find out while you're waiting to board the plane...welcome to Panama LOL...

I will probably fly though, because if I take that bus, I will arrive in awful shape in PTY and nobody wants to start a trip that way. Also, I'm willing to sacrifice $100 for a flight because time is worth the money in my opinion.

Once we arrive in Panama City, we will need to spend a night there and fly out the next day.

Who am I traveling with?

My husband @el-cr is coming with me! He's a bit more quiet than me on this platform, so many may not know him yet. Look out for a bald guy with a beard=)

The fancy hotel

OK so first I'd like to clarify something. I'm normally more of a hostel type of person, and could care less about luxury. In fact, it always baffles me how people can spend so much dough on a hotel room when they could be spending it on going out, food and visits instead. In my book, if it's clean and comfortable, it can be the most basic room, with just a mattress for all I care. No dorms though, I'm too old for that and I can't stand hearing other people snore....

So why are we staying at the Qubus you're asking?

Don't ask me how or why, but the stars seem to align all the way for me and my husband @el-cr with regards to this trip. First we won not only one but 2 tickets, which was completely unexpected, but now we are basically traveling for free!

@el-cr and I manage a Spanish school in Panama and we're using his credit card to book domestic flights for our students. We had been accumulating miles this way for at least 2 years now, and had never used them before. Since the idea of coming to Poland came up, we called United and checked how many we had and how far we could get with them, and surprise! It covers the flight all the way to Krakow with a layover in Frankfurt! I was already picturing flying to London first, and then having to book a smaller flight or train tickets to Poland, but NO! I'm telling you, the stars are aligning for some very strange reason.

But that's not all....

Once the customer service representative booked the free flight for us, she asked Would you like to use the remaining miles for a hotel? And of course we did! So once we checked which hotels were on the list, we saw the Qubus! At first we thought that maybe it would cover just a night or so, but NO! It covered the entire stay!

So that's why we are staying at the fancy shiny one, and I will make the most out of it! Gym every day and I will stuff myself at the breakfast buffet, you can bet on that!

OK guys, that's it for now, see you in Krakow - 21 days!

Cheers!