And what better language can you learn for fostering that spirit of inquiry than Portuguese? Difficult it may be, but it is a language steeped in a culture where both geographical and personal Voyages of Discovery have been inextricably interwoven for centuries.
The Portuguese have a talent for amicably absorbing other cultures and combine past and present in some of their most impressive 20th century Monuments.
The Suite 101 photograph on the Portuguese Welcome page pays tribute to this, the spirit of Portugal. The sculpted figures are a small section of those carved on the Monument to the Discoveries on the bank of the River Tagus or o río Tejo as it is in Portuguese.
Known as the padrão dos descobrimentos ( pronounced pa-drow dosh des-cob-ree-men-toosh ), it exemplifies the Portuguese genius for incorporating the past seamlessly into the present.
An undoubtedly modern sculpture (it was completed in 1960), it homes the classically carved historical figures in an imaginative abstract stone setting which brings to mind the wind-filled sails of the caravels on their fifteenth and sixteenth century voyages and the strong Christian motivation behind them.
Leading from the front, caravel in hand, Prince Henry the Navigator looks outward to horizons new as once he did at the presumed fim do mundo ( pronounced feeng doo moon-doo ), the end of the world, off the shores of Sagres, Portugal's most south-westerly point.
Behind him, East and West, the poet Camões and lines of navigators, explorers and churchmen, a painter, a king and a queen with English connections take their places as befits the parts they played in Portugal's Golden Age.
"God gave a small country to the Portuguese as their cradle," wrote the Jesuit Father António Vieira, " but all the world as their grave."
Above the figures the stone towers like a massive sail against which they nestle and climb. Behind them, on the stern to the North, the great cross of Jesus does double duty as a sword.
Below the monument, a mosaic compass echoes the one still in existence at Sagres. Inside this complex patterned rosa dos ventos lies the map of the world charting the great exploratory journeys of the caravels.
A photograph of a modern-day caravel, the Boa Esperança ( the Good Hope) on the Tagus can be found at "http://www.aporvela.pt/Embarcacoes/Boa_E..."
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