Portugal

License plates have a yellow strip on the right.

Some utility poles have partitions with holes in them.

The pedestrian crossing sign shows a figure wearing a belt at the waist.

In warm-looking European scenery, a black background with yellow chevrons is almost always Portugal.

Old cobblestone roads sometimes appear on the outskirts of towns, and sidewalks can be cobblestone too. In old town centers, cobblestone without tiles is common.

Street names often follow patterns like "RUA ~" or "~ DE ~."

Portugal produces more than 50% of the world's cork, with Spain a distant second.

If it looks humid or rocky, it's likely the northern half. Inland areas in particular have more trees, and ferns and moss often grow there too.

The maritime pine (Pinus pinaster), a tall pine species, seems to be more common in the north.

Trees with straight, thin trunks and pale, peeling bark, and long, drooping gray-green leaves, planted in dense rows, mean a eucalyptus plantation. Especially common in the hills of the central region (Aveiro, Coimbra, etc.).

Lots of farmland and dry conditions point to the southern half.

Madeira and the Azores are outlying islands whose license plates, utility poles, signs, and so on are nearly identical to the mainland's. The utility poles are the same as on the mainland.

Terraced vineyards carved densely from top to bottom on both sides of a deep river valley mean the Douro Valley. Low stone retaining walls run along each terrace, built of gray schist with vertical cleavage.

Flat, flooded plots divided by straight irrigation channels, with a low embankment only around the edge, mean rice paddies. They are limited to alluvial lowlands near river mouths, concentrated in the valleys of the Tejo and Sorraia, Sado, and Mondego rivers.

Dry grassland dotted sparsely with thick-trunked, wide-canopied oaks (cork oak, holm oak) at regular intervals, with the undergrowth cleared to look like savanna, means the montado of Alentejo.

Dense hedgerow-like rows of short olive trees (super-intensive olive groves), with gaps left only between the rows as access paths, spread across reddish-brown flat land, mean the irrigated land around the Alqueva Dam. Black drip-irrigation tubing runs along each row.

Evergreen orchards of citrus (orange) with uniform, round, dark-green canopies filling a hillside mean the Algarve. It's about the only place in Portugal where citrus appears in a large contiguous block.

Around Peneda-Gerês National Park, huge boulders often sit right at the roadside. Distinctive thin-stone curbs also show up occasionally.

The Serra da Estrela mountains have Portugal's only ski resort, and some roads there have roadside snow poles. Rocks are common along the roadside too.

On the Berlengas Islands, you can spot a 17th-century fort or lighthouse.

Lisbon has trams run by Carris (Companhia Carris de Ferro de Lisboa), which began operating in 1873.