Cows and Roosters

As you saw before, Lisboa currently has some cow statues all throughout town, each painted by a different artist (something Madison is also doing at the moment). Here's a collage of some of the cows we saw...


And below is a similar kind of thing, but a rooster in in the town of Barcelos. The rooster of Barcelos has become an icon of Portugal in general. It's from a myth you can read about here.

Portugal's (short-lived) Celebration

Here are a few photos of the celebration in Lisbon after Portugal's heartstopping win against England. Unfortunately, the team went on to lose a squeaker to France in the semifinals (with some questionable officiating, we might add) and then lost the 3rd place game to the home team Germans. But hey, fourth place in the world for a small country like Portugal? Not too shabby...

The celebrations were wonderful to see, not least because they appeared to be completely spontaneous and the product of sheer joy and excitement. Videos to follow, perhaps soon, perhaps after things calm down at the Menagerie (mid August?)...


The videos will give a better sense of the tremendous din of car horns...

Eventually, inevitably, some kids jumped in the fountain..

Here, Daniela and her mom pose in front of a cow painted with the team uniforms and kicking a ball-- Lisbon is currently having one of the increasingly common urban art installations, where various artists paint some object (cows, in this case, pandas when I lived in DC) in various ways.

POOORRRTTTTUUGGAAAAAL!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sim! Sim! Sim! Portugal! Portugal! Portugal!

In case you live, like, somewhere else, we'd like you to know that Portugal beat Inglaterra last night. It was very exciting as it came down to a shoot out where Ricardo, our keeper, blocked THREE goals (breaking a World Cup record, thank you very much). Take that, David Beckham (sorry, Kate)! We are muito happy. So is all of Portugal...much celebrating in the streets, honking horns, waving flags, playing drums, kids in the fountains of Lisboa, amazing stuff. (too bad about our Portuguese-speaking compadres in Brazil, but at least now we don't have to play a former colony! again.)

At "Eleven:" our own post-game photos and video from the celebration at the Praça do Rossio, Lisboa.