On the way to the airport Sunday, the chatty cabdriver, Isabel, pointed out sights along the way. “Here is where the king would stop on his way to Sintra,” she said, pronouncing it “Seen trah.” It was a two-day trip so he needed an intermediary palace, she explained. And sure enough, there was a telltale spire amidst the trees and apartment blocks. 

“The past is so alive here,” I said, exclaiming over the beauty and the bounty of the place I was sad to be leaving. 

“But you are a young country,” she said, pronouncing it “young uh.” “We are old.”

I thought of her words as the plane touched the tarmac at Dulles Airport in the waning light of a midsummer evening. Everything was so green, and there was so much space. It was easy for a moment to see the potential of this continent, the feelings that must have greeted its discovery by Europeans. 

It’s easy to rhapsodize over the quaint lanes and cobblestones of Europe, to decry the fast food joints and 10-lane highways of the U.S. But it’s important to keep Isabel’s observation in mind. Portugal is the Old World. We are the New.