This weekend I traveled to Lisbon and Cascais, both in Portugal. Portugal is now tied with Greece as being the most beautiful/my favorite place that I have ever been to! So bump it up on your list!
While I was there, I believe I saw most of Lisbon, plus the town of Cascais as well. I saw the main cathedral, the castle, the pantheon, a few museums, a convent, the streets, and of course many more things. But I think this blog post would be better served if I focused on a different theme.
Many people are too quick to discount Portugal, as being an ‘extension of Spain’ and thus ‘the same’ as Spain. This is wrong, for big reasons and small.
Portugal was officially recognized as being independent from Spain in 1668, but there were differences between them long before that. First and most obvious, of course, is the language difference. Although there are many similarities between Spanish and Portuguese, there are many more differences.
I also noticed that many people in Lisbon and Cascais spoke both English and Spanish in addition to Portuguese. I think this is impressive because if you went to Madrid or Barcelona, many people would indeed know English, but very few would also know Portuguese. This made it extremely easy to travel in Portugal.
There are also many smaller cultural differences I noticed. First, people walked in the streets a lot. In Spain, there is not much street-walking. Not so in Lisbon, where sometimes there were more people in the streets than cars. Also, when I ordered coffee in Lisbon, not only did it come with two sugar packets instead of one, but I was also expected to pay for it beforehand, which is just something you don’t so in Spain!
Lastly, there is simply more diversity in Portugal’s people than there is in Spain. In Spain the large majority of people have similar characteristics: medium height, brown hair, a fair or medium skin tone…you get the idea. But in Portugal, there was much more diversity.
Lisbon is very beautiful, and like I said before, is definitely one of my favorite places that I have been to thus far. Is it a coincidence that two years ago I was in Greece, my other favorite place?! I think not. 🙂
Below are some of my favorite shots from my trip. Enjoy!
