A Postcard A Day - Tuesday 2 June 2026 - T for cats,

 Hello lovely peeps,

Here I am again with a postcard and some photos from my trip that you haven't seen yet. Here is one of the postcards that was waiting in my mail box when I got home:

I was so happy that I was reunited with my cat Ronnie, that this card really 'spoke' to me. It is entitled (using Google Translate) 'On Christmas Eve' by Maria Pavlova. There is no date/year, but it's very timeless. 

I've come back to very high temperatures (we don't seem to have spring. We jump from winter straight into summer). I've had to change my bed from a thick duck down duvet with flanelette duvet covers to cool cotton sheets. Today it's 35 degrees C (95 F).

While I was photographing the card, Ronnie joined me on the table:

The stamps on the card are the usual Russian ones:

The sticker of the man:

As you can read it is the author Chekhov.

Now I would like to show you a few photos of Romania that you haven't seen yet. While we were staying in Brasov, we visited the delightful little town of Sighisoara, in the very centre of Romania in Transylvania. Wikipedia writes:

Located in the historic region of Transylvania, Sighișoara had a population of 23,927 according to the 2021 census. It is a popular tourist destination for its well-preserved old town, which is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site since 1999.

 Vlad Dracul (father of Vlad the Impaler), lived in exile in the town. 

We had lunch in his house as it is now a restaurant. I think Bram Stoker based his Dracula stories on Vlad the Impaler who was very cruel and the name he took from his father (Dracul, meaning 'the dragon').

In the main town square I saw a house with antlers. The above photo is mine and below is a photo from the Internet:

The Clock Tower has a beautiful roof:

As it's a fortified town there are city walls and defensive towers on every corner. There are nine towers. These towers were paid for by the different guilds in the town.

Below is the Bootmaker's tower:

Despite its low height, the tower is interesting due to its pentagon plan, an outer diameter of 10 meters long and a roof hosting two small and elegant observation towers, one facing South-east and one North-west. The current tower was built in 1681 on the site of a previous destroyed tower.

Our little group was staying in Brasov, a really nice city, in a hotel called Kronwell. It was the nicest hotel I have stayed in (so far). 

We stayed a few nights and every day when I came back from whatever we were doing, there was a flask of tea and some sweeties waiting for me on my desk:

This can be my 'ticket' to Elizabeth and Bluebeard's T-Party.

The TV welcomed me by name:

There was an fancy espresso machine:

The coffee was free but the bottles of wine had to be paid for.

And a very comfy bed:

I forgot to take a picture of the outside but found one on the Internet.

That is enough for today I think.

Happy T-Day all!

Lisca

A Postcard A day - Friday 29 May 2026 - Friday Smiles

Hello lovely peeps,

I'm finally home again! I arrived yesterday in the early hours of the morning. In the course of yesterday, I set the washing machine to work and I went to the shops to get some basic provisions. I also went to empty my mailbox and I found this lovely card from my friend Maggie:

It shows a 16th century fresco from Knossos called 'Ladies in Blue'. They certainly are very beautiful. (Look at their wasp waist line!)

Maggie and her husband are in Greece, on the island of Crete to be precise, where Knossos is.

The website of the Metropolitan Museum of Art writes this:

Excavated before 1914 near Royal Magazines, Knossos.

This group of three women was originally restored by E. Gillieron, designed on the basis of other fragments of frescos from Knossos, mostly of a much smaller scale. It has been shown that details of the facial outline of the "Cup-bearer" fresco, a reproduction of which is displayed in the exhibition, supplied the model for the faces of the "Ladies in Blue", which are not preserved at all.

This fresco reproduces the few fragments of burnt and abraded original fresco, represented as slightly offset from the restoration, and shows the extent to which the Gillierons recreated the scene. Extensive restorations like this one led the writer Evelyn Waugh after a visit to the Archaeological Museum in Herakleion in 1929 to state it is not easy to judge the merits of Minoan painting "since only a few square inches of the vast area exposed to our consideration are earlier than the last twenty years, and it is impossible to disregard the suspicion that their painters have tempered their zeal for accurate reconstruction with a somewhat inappropriate prediliction for the covers of Vogue."

The stamp also features Crete (Thank you Maggie):

The Lighthouse Stamp Society writes:

On 29 Jun 2023, Greece issued a mini sheet of 4 stamps with the theme “Traveling in Greece”. The stamps show views of Crete. One of the stamps depicts the inactive Réthymno Lighthouse located at the port of the same name on the north coast of Crete.

Wikipedia writes: Rethymno, or Rethimno, is a city on the north coast of the Greek island of Crete. In the old town, the Venetian Harbor is filled with fishing boats and lined with tavernas. Rethymno Lighthouse was built in the 1830s.

What's happening here in Spain? I flew back from Istanbul to Malaga (with Turkish airlines, which merits a mention as it was very good). My sister picked me up from the airport and I stayed a few days with her in Marbella. She lives a short walk from the beach, so here I am walking along the water's edge:

Below I am at my sister's, with my feet in the pool drinking a glass of something nice. I feel blessed.

I started preparing this blog (looking for the funnies) by the pool:

On Wednesday, before catching the evening bus home, my sister, her husband and I had lunch on the beach at a bar called The Hippopotamus!

Then I got on the bus which arrived at 01:15 in the morning. Then a taxi ride home and blissfully sleeping in my own bed (after a cuddle with Ronnie the cat).

That is all for today.

More news on Tuesday. In the meantime there are some funnies at the end.

Enjoy your weekend,

Lisca

 

A Postcard A Day - Tuesday 26 May 2026 - T for Turkey

 Hi gang,

I'm in Istanbul, Turkey but when you are reading this I will have flown back to Spain. I'm having the time of my life here in Istanbul. From a previous visit to Turkey, I remember the people were so friendly... well they still are!

This is the station in Plovdiv, a lovely town in Bulgaria. (We all liked Plovdiv more than Sofia) and we are waiting for our night train. The only time we would actually sleep on a train. I had my own cabin:

It was quite comfortable and I would have slept really well if it hadn't been for the border checks. 

At midnight we arrived at the Bulgarian border. Everyone out, passport control and the Brits among us had to have their fingerprints done and photos taken etc. There were a lot of Brits on the train as there was a football match in Istanbul between Aston Villa and a Turkish team. So it took more than an hour (Not nice standing on a cold windy platform). Then we could go back on the train. I managed to fall asleep again and at 4 am we reached the Turkish border control and this time we had to take all our luggage out with us as well. Same drill, but it didn't take as long this time. The main station in Istanbul (where the Orient Express used to finish/start), is being refurbished so the train stopped in a suburb and we were taken into town by minibus. The hotel was called the Pera Palace 

and it was the hotel that Agatha Christie stayed at when she was there.

This is the old elevator, which is not in use any more but it looks amazing.  My room was on the first floor so I used the stairs.

The view from my room was amazing:

The water you see in the distance is the Bosporus and on the other side is Asia!

This chair was outside my room:

On the last day of our stay, a few of us decided to splash out on Afternoon Tea in the Agatha Christie tea room of the hotel:

The ceilings are a sight to behold:

And the food was gorgeous, a feast for the eye. There was a pianist playing and it made me feel really special.

Although I was a bit disappointed that we didn't get any bubbly. (Only tea or coffee).

My coffee cup is my 'ticket' to the T-Party, hosted by Elizabeth and Bluebeard.

That morning I had been to see a museum. I always prefer to do that on my own as I like to read everything, not just walk past exhibits. 

This exhibition was about an impressionist painter Halil Pasha. It was all about his life and work. Very interesting.

In the picture below, you see a self portrait, where the artist himself removed the fez (sign of the old Turkey) to show he was a modern Turk. The image of the original painting is on the right.

Like in Lisbon they had these old trams. I remember them from my childhood. One of our group was a tram enthusiast and in every city he would ride trams and go 'tram watching'.

There is also a funicular, which I took several times as it takes you to  Galata, which is harbour level.

This bridge reminded me of the Swan bridge in Rotterdam.

My next adventure was, after having checked out of the hotel, to stay at a private address in Istanbul. Through HomeExchange I got to stay with three delightful girls in a different part of the city.

They shared a duplex apartment right at the top. 

A lot of stairs, but a lovely apartment.

I got on well with the girls and we had a lot of fun. On Saturday night they invited me along to a performance of a Brazilian stand-up comedian called Rafi Bastos. 

His performance was in English and it was a great evening.

After the performance we managed to get a selfie with him:

I had great fun with these girls. They treated me like royalty and took me out the next evening. First we went out for dinner:

Another ticket to the T-Party. The meal was slow cooked beef with baked beans (nothing like the tinned variety) and rice.

Here I am with my lovely hostess.

I found a little shop to buy some souvenirs. In true Turkish fashion, we got offered a glass of tea and then some Turkish Delight. We took some photos in the lamp department of the shop. Very pretty. 

But a lamp did not fit in my suitcase.

We walked along the water front at Galata port. There was a cruise ship moored up. I had my photo taken in front of this art work. I think it's a spiral of letters and words associated with Istanbul.

At some point, one of the girls recognised a guy in the street as somebody who posts on Instagram videos of cats in Istanbul:

His blog is called John Gokblog. You'll find him in Instagram.

He photographs street cats, which are everywhere in Istanbul.

That's it from me tonight. 

Happy T-Day all!

Lisca