What do you know about Portugal?

They wouldn’t let us put no Portuguese in the advertisement… But… No Portuguese….

I had some wonderful times in Portugal. I loved wandering around the steep hills and narrow streets of Lisbon. I have traveled to various places not too far from the capital, too. Obidos, for example. It was over two decades ago, so I don’t remember much, now. I do remember driving across that huge bridge from Lisbon just for fun, not because I wanted to go anywhere over there.

The food was quite salty compared to what I was used to. All that salt cod.

Footballer Eusebio, played in the sixties/seventies & without doubt, up there with the greats of all time. Ronaldo/Figo as you state, clearly deserve a mention.
Vasco Da Gama
Good wines
Of course, it’d be very remiss of me to fail to mention the portuguese man o war, us being “jellies” & all.

Portuguese people live there, apparently there’s a really cranky Portuguese sea creature that fucks with people, and I know how to say Portuguese with a proper accent, thanks to an old high school teacher. That’s about it. :(

Well, I rode my bike around Portugal back in 1980. I loved it.

I remember the groves of cork oak everywhere. Walls were covered with revolutionary graffiti at the time. People were incredibly friendly.

One incident I clearly remember: My friend and I had ridden into Lisboa from the north, and were trying to continue south out of the city, but this brought us to the giant estuary of the river. There was only one very long bridge across, and there was a “No Bicycles” sign. To go another way would have cost us hours, so we decided to risk it.

About halfway across, a cop pulled us over and was giving us a pretty hard time. Then, some guy in a little truck pulled over and started arguing with the cop. After a couple of minutes, the trucker gestured for us to throw our bikes in the back of the truck. The cop was still fussing, but the truck looked like our only hope, so we piled in. We drove away, leaving the cop fuming. The driver took us about 50 miles down the road so the cop wouldn’t hassle us any more. Very cool.

Their decriminalized drug laws
Thank you brave neckbeards of Reddit!

Located on the Iberian penninsula.

Prince Henry the Navigator. Beautiful Fado music. Tucked away in the corner by Spain. Lots of cork.

Where Ingrid Bergman and Paul Henreid went at the end of Casablanca.

The language is beautiful and seems to be made up mainly of vowels.

I know it is a great seafaring nation. It once had a vast empire, and I visited a tiny corner of it, Macau.

I know the Portuguese came to Hawai`i long before many other nations. We had cowboys here in Hawai`i recorded as early as 1803, which is long before there were any in what is now the western US. I don’t know the exact etymology of the Hawai`ian word, but it’s said that paniolo or cowboy came from Portuguese.

It’s where my great grandmother is from. There is an island called Madeira somewhere off the coast of Portugal.
The capital is Lisbon. It borders Spain.
It colonized Brazil.

I was just looking at a time zone map today and realized that it is in a different time zone than the rest of Europe (which is equally split into two time zones).

It has been has been many years since I’ve been to Portugal. All I remember is riding through narrow streets in a speeding Mercedes taxi. Take the bus,

All things considered, I know very little. Most of what I do know is peripheral to my knowledge of Celtic history – like how some historians think the Moors may have traveled to Ireland and Britain from Morocco via Portugal, and that is why some very similar musical influences are heard in Celtic music as well as music from all along the Silk Road.

When I think of Portugal, the first thing that comes to mind is its role in the Age of Exploration—Henry the Navigator, Brazil, Macau, etc. The second thing is a Portuguese girl I met in a youth hostel in Paris who was pretty and vivacious but had the usual European attitudes about everything. She told me something about the dictator who ran Portugal for a while, but I can’t recall his name or when the dictatorship ended. I’m afraid I can’t think of any Portuguese artists or scientists off the top of my head as I am writing this.

Just fragments:

There was a bad earthquake in Lisbon centuries ago.
There is a pilgrimage route that goes from the north of Portugal along the Pyrenees. There was a film made about it with Martin Sheen.
Portuguese is quite widely spoken, Brazil and Angola for example.
The Algarve is a popular tourist destination for Scots.
The economy is in bad shape.

It has some great wine growing regions.

Wow, I’m impressed, you guys have some really cool memories, stories and facts!

@burntbonez The narrow streets are marvelous! Obidos is also really nice and the bridge is beautiful, almost like the Golden Gate bridge in SF!

@ucme Eusébio, nice one! Excellent wines indeed! The Portuguese Man o’ war, really dangerous! We don’t get them that much in Portugal though.

@thorninmud There are some very friendly people over here, I agree and I am happy that that guy stopped and helped you out :)

@zenvelo Biggest exporter of cork in the world over here!

@gailcalled I love the language too :)

@Hawaii_Jake Cool, I didn’t know about that whole Hawaii story.

@Aesthetic_Mess Madeira is where the great Cristiano Ronaldo was born! And you are right about the other facts :)

@dxs We’ve got the same time zone as the UK!

@Ron_C Oh yes, taxi drivers. They piss me off! Always in a rush and always really dangerous, especially in the narrow streets of Lisbon!

@submariner The dictator is probably Salazar and the dictatorship ended in 1974 with the Carnation Revolution!

@flutherother Yes, the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, it destroyed pretty much the whole city. The Algarve is also really popular for English tourists. They’ve actually almost changed the name to Allgarve. And yes, the economy is not looking good.

@WestRiverrat The wine is excellent!

@bhec10 Okay will contiguous Europe at least…

@bhec10 Eusebio was playing before my time, but the footage of him playing in the 1966 world cup here in england shows just how great a playet he was, true legend.

Portuguese is a language that every time I hear, I THINK I should understand but I don’t (I speak Spanish). Portuguese people can generally understand me when I speak to them though in Spanish.

Good management of their debt crisis.