holiday villa portugal
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Flights inside the country are expensive and hardly worth considering, given the short distances involved. A domestic departure tax is levied, but it's included in the price of the ticket. Trains are much cheaper, but it's almost always quicker to go by bus - especially as a number of private companies operate express services between major cities and the Algarve. Note that bicycles are not permitted on trains. There are dozens of car-rental agencies, though you should bear in mind that petrol is pricey. Bicycles can also be rented in some tourist areas. Local transport includes trams, buses and plentiful and cheap taxis. Lisbon has an underground metro (which is being expanded) and some stately funiculars.
Lusitania has been inhabited since the Paleolithic period. Implements made by humans have been found at widely scattered sites. The Ice Ages did not touch Lusitania, and it was only after the disappearance of the Paleolithic hunting cultures that a warmer climate gave rise to a river-centered culture. At the end of the Paleolithic period, about 7000 B.C., the valley of the Tagus River (Portuguese, Rio Tejo) was populated by hunting and fishing tribes, who lived at the mouths of the river's tributaries. These people left huge kitchen middens containing the remains of shellfish and crustaceans, as well as the bones of oxen, deer, sheep, horses, pigs, wild dogs, badgers, and cats. Later, perhaps about 3000 B.C., Neolithic peoples constructed crude dwellings and began to practice agriculture. They used polished stone tools, made ceramics, and practiced a cult of the dead, building many funerary monuments called dolmens. By the end of the Neolithic period, about 2000 B.C., regions of cultural differentiation began to appear among the Stone Age inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula, one of these being the western Megalithic culture. Present-day Portugal is thus rich in Megalithic neocropolises, the best known of which are at Palmela, Alcalar, Reguengos, and Monsaraz. The Paleolithic and Neolithic periods were followed by the Bronze Age and the Iron Age (probably between 1500 and 1000 B.C.). During this time, the Iberian Peninsula was colonized by various peoples. One of the oldest were the Lígures, about whom little is known. Another were the Iberos, thought to have come from North Africa. The Iberos were a sedentary people who used a primitive plow, wheeled carts, had writing, and made offerings to the dead.
Portuguese domestic commerce was dominated by numerous small, family-owned firms concentrated in the major urban areas. Retail outlets, around 80,000 in the late 1980s, were declining in numbers as supermarkets increased their market share. At the same time, upscale but smaller sales outlets were growing in number, replacing traditional retail shops. In both retailing and wholesaling, foreign investor participation was helping to accelerate the modernization of Portugal's domestic trade. Foreign tourism was an important component of Portugal's services sector. Foreign exchange receipts from tourism income amounted to US$2.57 billion in 1989, compared with US$0.55 billion in 1973 and US$1.15 billion in 1980. This service industry directly employed an estimated 150,000 persons, equivalent to nearly 4 percent of the active labor force that year but indirectly had strong secondary impacts, particularly on construction. From 1973 to 1990, tourism income as a share of GDP was roughly stable, fluctuating between 5 and 6 percent. The mid-1970s proved to be an exception: the brief period of radical politics combined with the global recession led to a halving of foreign arrivals to 2 million in 1975 from over 4 million in 1973 and to a sharp reduction in the receipts/GDP ratio to 2 percent from 5 percent in the earlier year. There were 7.3 million foreign arrivals in 1981, 16.5 million in 1989, and an estimated 18.4 million in 1990.