Portugal and a military show of force

We've been in Portugal now for about 10 days, and can't seem to locate the blog habit.  It takes time to make something happen, and we've been so engaged with getting to know Lisbon that it seems to be all we can manage.

With Lisbon looming large and indigestible, but wanting to prime the blog pump, a small presentable chunk emerged on Sunday morning:  we stumbled onto a military parade outside of the Portuguese President Anibal Silva's residence in Belem, just outside of Lisbon.  We were there to see a couple of museums, and were thrilled to hear drums and see shiny helmets in the distance.  Apparently it's a regular Sunday morning occurrence, and included about 250 soldiers (5 women), lots of swords, scabbards, helmets and brass, 4 dogs, about 100 horses and two bands, one on foot, one on horseback.  And about 45 minutes of excitement, equine beauty, music, and pageantry.  Observations:

Mounted brass band, on mostly white horses led the procession, with a marching band behind.  The music was  marchable, but not something either of us knew. 

Marching band in dark uniforms followed the white horse band.  

The main drummer's horse's ears were usually twisting around, but he was really well behaved.  Couldn't be easy with that constant noise.  

And his mane, as well as all the mounted bands' horses manes were braided.  

The 5 ladies on horseback wore ties.  Why?!

Four dogs, three shepherd mixes and a rottweiler.

Sweet, sweet uniforms.  Posture and uniformity of size and seriousness were pretty cool, too.

This leader guy had attitude, and chose to wear his chin strap mid-chin.  Some chose below chin.  Marching band members were exempt from chin straps; mounted ones had them.  Don't know. 

The ones on white mounts had helmet tassles that matched their mounts' tails.  

The "lead" horses were marked with anklets -- dark ones with blue, white ones with red.

And the horses all had had pedicures -- sporting shiny hooves for the procession.  

The horses also had special rump combing for the day -- quite lovely.  Less visible on the whites' rears, but it was there (see three photos up).

Swords raised, on command.  Steve had an Onion-like thought including the headline  "Massacre on Belem street,  officer apologizes for garbled command."

Back to their Sundays.

The street cleaner, ready to pick up the inevitable horse leavings.

Portuguese is not an easy language.  When written it is much like Spanish, and is borderline accessible then, but when spoken, it becomes an undecipherable Russian-like melodic mess -- easy to enjoy, impossible to understand (from here).  As in most parts of the world, making the attempt is appreciated, and then their frequently-accessible layer of English emerges.  Sigh.  To be born into the current lingua-franca has many blessings.

We really don't know if anyone's interested in this blog.  If you are and have thoughts as to what might be fun to read about, please let us know by comment on this page or by email to either of us.