Um, not quite. But the Portuguese capital is in the midst of massive hotel development, with 37 new hotels debuting in Lisbon and its surrounding area through 2011.

Four- and five-star hotels are popping up in cities outside Lisbon like Sintra, Óbidos and Estoril. In the nearby Algarve region, 10 projects are underway, including the five-hotel, 17,500-bed property Vilamoura XXI and the five-star hotel and Jack Nicklaus golf resort, Monte Rei.

If you're booking a trip to Portugal next year, you might want to check into one of several new hotels set to open throughout 2009, like the Pousada do Porto - Palácio do Freixo, in Porto; the CS Oporto Vintage Hotel, a converted port warehouse in

Toilets have been making news around the globe this week. First, in Portugal where a mall is attempting to entice customers by lining their "bathrooms with lingerie clad mannequins." They have both male and female versions of these "underwear models" depending on which bathrooms you visit. Next up on the toilet beat, Beijing where to prepare for the Olympics, organizers are "refitting the toilets at three main Olympic venues after complaints from foreign athletes about having to squat." In China, many toilets involve standing over a whole in the ground. They also often lack toilet paper. I think the Portugese bathroom designers should go to Beijing and help out with the Olympic toilet redesign. The presence of sexy naked plastic dolls would help promote the Olympic ideals of friendship and hotness.

http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=78356&videoChannel=4

http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSN1948778520080319

Even if I hadn’t been told about this idea of saudade – a feeling of longing or melancholy mixed with hope for finding what is lost that permeates the Portuguese personality – I would have felt it still.

My friend Gabriela, who I visited in Porto, was the first to tell me about it. She said that I would see. That there’s a certain sense of longing that permeates the Portuguese personality that I would eventually sense – despite the cerulean skies, the merrily flapping laundry in the wind and the typically European conviviality around the dinner table.

When I asked her where she thought this longing came from, she said that perhaps it’s because the Portuguese were always travelers. Always explorers in search of something better – or at least something different – on foreign shores.

I certainly sensed her saudade.

When I first met Gabriela in Morocco, she was traveling. Abuzz at the overwhelming sounds, sights and smells of the medina in Marrakech. Visiting her at home in Porto, I found her back to normal life. There were stresses at work, pressure from friends, and above all, a deep longing to return to New Zealand, where she had lived for a year.

The more I thought about it, the more I felt the weight of my own saudade in Portugal.

Perhaps it was the quietness of the cafes in the mornings, where couples sit side by side and speak in low voices as if not to disturb their neighbors. Even at a touristy seaside overlook near Lisbon, it was a busload of Spanish tourists that were gabbing away excitedly and bubbling about, injecting life into what was otherwise just a postcard perfect backdrop.

There is an overall quietness to life here that makes you reflect.

All I do is travel. My mother has always called me a seeker, and it unsettles her to some degree. She wishes I would just find what I’m looking for already, get a proper job – with benefits – and settle down.

The thing is, I don’t really know what I am looking for.

I am just looking around to see what there is, trying to learn a little of everything, and the more I look the more I get lost about where it is that I ultimately want to settle – in fact, the more I wonder if I can settle at all.

In a way, I suppose, it is melancholic, this saudade. Never being fully content where I am.

And there is longing, to be sure – always wondering if perhaps the grass is a shade greener over there. But it is what keeps things interesting to me. Never knowing what I will find over there. Even when the grass isn’t greener, well, at least I know.

- by Terry Ward

Representing more than 150 of the world's most design-savvy hotels in over 40 countries, design hotels (all lower-cased for design effect) have just added another 38 newcomers to its list of stylish abodes.

At the top of our wish list is the Jerόnimos 8 in Lisbon, Portugal, named after the 16th century Jerόnimos Monastery in front of which it stands. Just a stone's throw away from the glorious beaches of the Estoril coast, the Tagus riverfront and the hustle and bustle of downtown Lisbon, this hotel combines new age comforts and cutting-edge design in an old world setting.

It's this juxtaposition of the old and new that sets the Jerόminos 8 apart stylewise, with

Monica Guy, our own younger, blonder, more attractive but still curmudgeonly version of Andy Rooney has returned to us once more. This time, she's giving us the lowdown on the Lisbon hotel scene. Also, we left her bolded words in place to show how frustrated she gets. Enjoy.

Here's an award we sorely need: the hotel that does what a hotel ought to do without making an almighty fuss.

The 4-star Hotel Aviz, Lisbon, wins at least a runner-up prize in that. We stayed there after turning up our noses at the booby hotel Bairro Alto.

Clean, comfy beds, plenty of room, nice quilt. Good shower, bath, a few useful toiletries, a small buffet of nice

Monica Guy, our own younger, blonder, more attractive but still curmudgeonly version of Andy Rooney has returned to us once more. This time, she's giving us the lowdown on the Lisbon hotel scene. Also, we left her bolded words in place to show how frustrated she gets. Enjoy.

We should set up a new prize - the Worst 5-star Hotel in the World. A booby prize for the hotel where you pay the most money for the poorest facilities, worst food and rudest service.

Here's a candidate: the Bairro Alto Hotel, Lisbon, Portugal. A 5-star, 5-floor joke of a boutique hotel.

The website claims it's in a "privileged location" at the "junction of 2 emblematic