Lounging in Lisbon

A street in downtown Lisbon. This kind of architecture is everywhere here.
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Portugal is a bit overlooked due to its larger more dominant neighbor Spain.  The people here are very proud of their illustrious past and are benefiting from membership in the European Union as the infrastructure of the country improves, etc.  Lisbon is a hard city to describe.  Somehow it is very European but at the same time doesn't feel like London, Paris, etc.  Our first day here Osa wandered into some clothes store I have never heard of but somehow she knew they sometimes had "great clothes".  (I'm not sure where it is but there is clearly a global network of clothes shoppers that every woman I know is a member of.)  Anyway, so I'm killing time wandering among racks of women's clothes wishing the store had the decency to place a "husband" chair somewhere when I notice a whole section of the first floor made of glass.  When I say "floor" I mean it.  The thing you walk on was clear glass and underneath it was an excavation site with no plaque or labels to explain anything.  Nobody even bothered to look down until they saw me doing it and then acted like there was nothing to see.  I had to ask a security guard what it was.  Turns out there are Roman ruins of a salting house where they preserved fish under the store.  That seems to be typical here.  If you throw a rock in a random direction you will probably hit something of historical significance.

An aerial view of one of the many plazas throughout the city. Ive never been to a place with so many random open-spaces!
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Lisbon did not leave us with any strong and memorable impressions other than a somewhat dour group of people ( I had to think really hard to come up with an appropriate word!). Perhaps it is a lingering regret of what once used to be a significant nation......