Portugal Trip Comments
September 2009
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Using a non-stop flight from our nearby Philadelphia airport to Lisbon made getting to
Portugal very easy.
The weather was perfect. Consistently comfortable temperatures and no rain.
Our Portuguese journey was very pleasant.
We had almost no basic communication problems, although few Portuguese speak English and
we cannot converse in Portuguese. For essential communications it helped that we know
Spanish, which has many words similar to Portuguese, although not enough for real
conversations.
All Portuguese we met were very friendly and eager to be of help.
The food was excellent, regardless of where we ate. The fish, for which Portugal is well
known, was especially good. The main reason for the great-tasting food probably is that
meals are cooked to order by cooks who really seem to care. Also, use of olive oil helps
improve the flavor.
Portugal is a developed country with good train, bus, and subway systems. Nearly every
town seems to have at least one government tourist information office with helpful clerks
ready to provide maps and other useful information. All this makes it easy to get around.
There appear to be very few Americans in Portugal, which made us seem to the
Portuguese a more of an interesting novelty.
From what we saw at religious services in Fatima and Sitio, Portugal strikes us as a very
pious Catholic country. Additional evidence are the many large monasteries and very
ornate churches.
The Portuguese impressed us generally as being friendly, honest, clean, hard-working,
socially advanced, and conscious of their country's history.
We wish we could have stayed longer.
This is the end of the journal of our September 2009 visit to Portugal. We invite you to
return to "Our Travel Journals Main Menu" to see the journals of some of our other trips.