Lisbon, Portugal

The Belem Tower guards the city of Lisbon at the mouth of the Tagus River and the Atlantic Ocean. It looks well situated but has never been used as all invasions have come by land.

This time Luelle has put together two cruises and some land excursions … it’ll be a long time away from Hero and the Girls (chickens) and the fish, and the GrandBabies …  But we have a good team back home, so no worries.

The first cruise is with Uniworld on Portugal’s Duro River and we have three days in Lisbon before we board the ship.   After the Duro cruise we have 2 days to get ourselves to Seville, Spain to embark on a tour of the western Mediteranean with Azamara.   We haven’t decided how we’ll get to Seville,  maybe train, maybe rent a car, but I’ll write about each segment as we go.

The bridge connects the sides of the Tagus River and was patterned after the Golden Gate Bridge. The statue was patterned after the famous overlooking Rio de Janiero.

I was interested in seeing Portugal.   The history of course, and the fact that we’ve not been here before.   And our grand babies are 3/8ths Portugese.  But I wanted to see for myself the Portugese people and the economy that has been in the news for having received 3 European Union bailouts and is in a strict austerity payback mode.

Fortunately, Pilar, our tour guide and Uniworld Host is a wealth of information and holds nothing back.   She has lived here all her life and has lived thru all the turbulence.   Actually, you have to look deep or have someone point out the Austerity.   There are still nice cars on the streets and lots of well dressed people walking around and shopping malls with all the same stores we have in the US.

These streets are well over 1000 years old in the old town of Lisbon. There are open air markets, fish that was caught this morning, etc. Cars wont fit. No building codes either.

Digging deeper, we find that unemployment has gone from 4 to 18%.  To pay back the bail outs, Sales tax has been raised to 33% and Income tax to 52%.   These measures are causing businesses to close or leave … which compounds the inability to pay back the bail out loans.

So the situation here in Portugal is worse than in Ireland, but not as bad as Greece.  (The big 3 of the EU bail-outs)    Many young professionals have left the country to find work in the former Portugese speaking colonies,  Algeria,  Mozambique,  Brazil.   It’s been in the news, but its interesting to see it – boots on the ground.

Here are some of the things we learned on the first tour this morning and some of the sights.

Lisbon is 2.5 million population counting the suburbs.   It has a 3000 year history starting with colonization by the Greeks folllowed by the Romans, Muslims, Moors & Barbarians. About 400 years ago Spain unified the rest of the Iberian Peninsula and wanted Portugal to be part of Spain.   Portugal said No and it’s been testy between the two ever since.

Henry the Navigator was the architect of the Portugese expansion.  Portugal and Spain asked the Pope to mediate the division of the New World … since there was no UN at the time.    A line was drawn that gave Portugal Brazil and parts east, including Africa, and Spain the territory west of Brazil,   the rest of South, Central and North America.

This cable car #28 is famous, for among other things … getting pick pocketed. Pilar said that sometimes there are more pick pockets on the trolley than tourists.

The colonies of Brazil, Algeria and Mozambique kept providing wealth to Portugal for several hundred years.   But then Algeria and Mozambique wanted independence … So  the “Colonial War” was fought from 1961 to 1973.     Portugal was doomef from the beginning since Algeria is 10 times the size of Portugal. Salazar, the dictator at the time, refused to let the colonies go and hundreds of thousands of lives were lost.   The heavy debt left over from that war plus the loss of many of the best and the brightest and  the colonial income was the beginning of the current financial crisis.

With Wealth no longer coming in from the colonies, Portugal was not prepared for the competitive World of the late 20^th & 21^st century.    Pilar said the current debt crisis started with the war and then had two additional causes:

The Tiara Hotel where we stayed. As modern and 5 star as any. No austerity visible here.

1. Foolish spending by the government.   (buying submarines when they have very little navy)
2. Mandated spending by the EU to do things to keep consistent with EU countries.

Tomorrow we’ll see some countryside around Lisbon and see another perspective.

This is a photo of Mars. It was in a display on the wall in Dulles Airport as we were leaving. (Since you and I paid for it, the expedition and the photo and the airport) … I thought I would share it here. I think I may use it for desktop wallpaper ???