I woke up not even realizing it, but when I arrived here at the office I found an e-mail alerting me to the fact that June 10 is Portugal Day.

I should have known, as Portugal is one of my favorite countries. I first went there in 1989, after having visited most of Europe. And from the first day I had a good feeling about the place. I got the impression I was being treated not like a tourist - as is usually the case - but like a guest. The people had a sweet, relaxed, considerate disposition.

This is reflected in their national holiday. Unlike many countries, whose national days commemorate independence or constitutions or military triumphs, Portugal honors a poet: Luís Vaz de Camões, who died on this day in 1580.

Camões' great work was The Lusiads, an epic poem about Vasco da Gama's voyage to India. Camoes himself was, as the translator Landeg White writes in his introduction to the Oxford World's Classics edition of the poem, "the first European artist to cross the Equator and experience Africa and India at first hand."

So here's to a great country, with a great tradition of travel.