Port Two...Geese
Lisbon is a city not unlike San Francisco or DC, as the hectic yet cosmopolitan feel of visitors and tourists mixes in easily with business workers and local residents (Lisbon also shares a similar latitude as those two US cities). It is here at Lisbon that the 600-mile-long Tejo river spills into the Atlantic, although more than a few local residents may inwardly harbor thoughts of seeing tourists also flowing out into that ocean. That push-pull of wanting and yet not wanting ever more tourists and elderly expats arriving to their city hides the fact that (as with so many other tourist-dependent cities in the world) nearly 70% of the jobs here in Lisbon are in the service industry (for a few of the Canary Islands, that number can climb to over 80%). But there is another love-hate clash at work in this part Portugal, and that is one happening right next door in Spain. As the Rick Steves guidebook wrote: The Portuguese seem humbler and friendlier than the Spanish. V isitors