This is my take on Portugese people. In seven days I figure that Portugese People like to drink coffee or actually expresso or expresso with milk along with a small pastry any time of the day or night. They eat late Breakfasts and late Dinners. One of the guys at the front desk said that dinner time isn't until after 7:30 PM and it would not be uncommon to have dinner at 9:30 or later. I am not sure where most of them work since no matter what town we went to there wasn't much parking. Also we didn't come across many factories in our travels so I can only assume they are all office professionals, construction workers or in the service industry. They do produce a lot of wine. When we went to Colares there were two wineries and one was called the Regional propriatory of Colares and took up half of the small town. When we went to the Fonseca winery it took up most of the town but had a second plant that bottled the wine to the tune of 56,000 bottles an hour. We passed a lot of vinyards and orchards on our way to Evora so the rest of the population must be farmers.
I also think that the Portugese are much more forgiving and can accept foreigners better then us Americans. Not once were we turned away or not helped. In the flea market when we tried to ask the price of an article or about an articl if they didn't speak English they tried to explain to us what they were saying and gave us time to look up phrases in our translation book. Then again no one is flocking to Portugal to work so that might be why. They are a very slow people in that time does not matter to them except on the train. The trains leave and arrive on time but that is it. When you go to dinner they hound you at first to get your order then they leave you alone until you ask for the bill.