Lisbon is very much a laid-back town where manana has urgent overtones. Laurentino's self-assessment is borne out in the streets. Cranes, bulldozers and construction workers continue to dot this city of 2 million, and all are likely to stick around through the summer. In fairness and by way of explanation, Lisbon has been worn by African winds, rocked by a 1755 earthquake and neglected by a citizenry not in any rush to put a fresh face on antiquity. But if one is willing to let these things slide, Lisbon is ready to reward.
Few cities can summon up images of so many other great metropolises in such a compact area.
Wind your way through the narrow alleyways of the Moorish district of Alfama, and you'll think you're in north Africa. But the most striking comparisons are Lisbon to a major U.S. city and Portugal to a U.S. state. If refurbishment is in first gear in downtown Lisbon, it is in overdrive on the 840-acre site of Expo '98. Once a dock for tankers, the area contained a leaking oil storage facility, a solid-waste treatment plant and Third World shantytowns whose residents lived side by side with rusting steel drums and splintered boats. Taking their cues from successes and failures such as Barcelona's Summer Olympics in Barcelona and Seville's Expo, both in 1992, Portuguese organizers wanted to make sure that once Expo '98 ended the area wouldn't be abandoned.