A Postcard A Day - Tuesday 29 October 2019 - T for

Hello lovely girls! It's Tuesday again and time for the T-Party hosted by Elizabeth and Bleubeard. My entry (my beverage) will be visible further down in this blog post but first off are my postcards.

My first postcard comes from China and was sent by Li Ming. She tells me that she has met with two primary school class mates to drink tea. And they chatted about things 'many years ago'.

 The postcard depicts Xiaochunshu Lane (It doesn't mention which city though and what date approx).
The stamps are beautiful as many chinese stamps are. The one on the right clearly advertises  the Olympic Winter Games 2022 , but the one on the left is a bit of an enigma. I have no idea what these ladies are doing. Some sort of craft. Are they painting silk? Anyone got an idea?

 The third stamp shows an 18th century gentleman and I didn't know who he was until I googled the dates and came up with Joseph Haydn. 

Wikipedia says this:

He was an Austrian composer of the Classical period. He was instrumental in the development of chamber music such as the piano trio.^[2] His contributions to musical form have earned him the epithets "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet".^[3]

Haydn spent much of his career as a court musician for the wealthy Esterházy family at their remote estate. Until the later part of his life, this isolated him from other composers and trends in music so that he was, as he put it, "forced to become original".^[c] Yet his music circulated widely, and for much of his career he was the most celebrated composer in Europe.

He was a friend and mentor of Mozart, a tutor of Beethoven, and the older brother of composer Michael Haydn.

My second card comes from Portugal. It shows the city of Porto and the river Douro. 

 And they used a Harry Potter stamp! How cool is that!

Elizabeth often takes us to a restaurant she has visited. Let me take you to this lovely restaurant that we found when we were traveling back from Madrid. It is a place called Puerto Lápice, near Ciudad Real, in central Spain, south of Madrid. 

After we parked the car we walked to the entrance and found this statue.

 Is he Don Quixote? (After all we were still in La Mancha, I think)

Into the courtyard with some water vessels, or they might have been for wine, who knows. We see them everywhere here in Spain, as people no longer use them so usually display them in the garden or courtyard.

 A nice shaded outdoor area.

But we prefer an indoor dining room. The decor was olde worlde with antique furniture and ceramics.

I went to wash my hands and when I walked back to our table the man with the red shirt recognised me (I didn't see him at all)  and came over to us. He is a man who helped us a lot when we first came to Spain in 2004. It was lovely to see him again. What a coincidence though, so far away from home.
Before we said goodbye, he took a picture of the two of us:

And here is my qualifier for the T-Party. I'm drinking red wine and hubby  a small lager.

My first course was pisto. Hubby had something with vegetables.

 Hubs' main course. Again I forgot what it was, but he said it was lovely.

I hesitated showing you a picture of the rest rooms, but they were so beautiful that I just had to post these.

 Lovely old looking doors and beautiful tiles, even in the cubicles.

That is my lot for today. I am writing this on Monday evening, because my old friend from Holland is arriving later tonight and we will be catching up until the wee hours. We have known each other for more than 40 years. (we met at university). She and her partner are staying a while so I am quite excited about that.

Happy T-Day,
Hugs,
Lisca

A Postcard A Day - Friday 24 October 2019 - Friday Smiles

Hello lovely peeps,

As Elizabeth commented: I am a day early! Sorry! I got my days mixed up...you know... retired and all that....

Autumn has really started and it is so cold here all of a sudden! It has rained yesterday! (an event in these parts) and a friend of mine took a photo of the Sierra Nevada skiing area, where it has now snowed. Obviously not enough to ski on, but that will come soon.

I'm here to tell you what made me smile this week. And certainly this card from Finland made me smile from ear to ear! It is a card with an image by Inge Löök, one of my favorite illustrators. The naughty aunties always make me smile!

The person that sent it me, Ria, says she had attended a 'Postcard Happening' and a meet-up of Postcrossers (the organisation that I send postcards through).

At that Postcard Happening was Inge Löök herself, and she signed to card! How cool is that!

Even the postage stamp has the naughty aunties on it (It is one of the things Finland is famous for)

And Ria had added an orange sticker with the 'aunties' on it.

You can imagine, I am over the moon!

My second card comes from Canada. From Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, QC. Definitely the French speaking part. I like this card as we sometimes eat pancakes with blueberries (when I can get them).

The stamps are gorgeous and show Queen Elizabeth smiling. Those are really nice images of Her Majesty.

But by far the biggest smile this week is our 'new' car! I have not driven a car since 2010 and have lost my confidence a bit. And I have never wanted to drive the car we have as I have always been used to an automatic. Now we have changed our car and we have an automatic.

It's a Nissan Qashqai. I have driven it several times already. So I'm feeling very proud of myself. Hubby needs to have a couple of operations on his eyes in the near future, and I will have to drive him to and from the hospital.

Wednesday I had some friends round for a bit of crafting. We made these froebel stars. They are Origami.

 I like the name, as one of my blog friends in Austria (Susi) calls herself Froebelsternchen, which is the same thing.

I didn't have any Christmassy papers, but I think these colurs are great anyway.

 I had seen it on the internet and had practiced making them. But we did get stuck at some point and had to un-pick the whole thing! So I got my iPad out and we watched a Youtube video and followed it step by step.

For those who are interested: The video was Maymay made it: Froebel star.

Monday night  we were at our weekend home. We try to watch a DVD every time we go there as there is a tv there. Of course we've seen all our DVDs. Would you believe, we watched Mamma Mia the film! Oh what fun. Singing along to all the songs! Great!

Someone on Facebook commented that if 

That is all for now. 

I'm going to link up with Annie at A Stitch In Time and with Virginia at Rocking Your World Friday.

There will be some funnies at the end; forgive me if I have shown you these already. I think the one with the Houses of Parliament by the bridge is not new. But hey, I can't remember....

Have a lovely weekend,

Keep smiling!

Hugs,

Lisca

A Postcard A Day - Tuesday 22 October 2019 - T for a castle and a cross

Hello lovely people,

I have a sneaky feeling this is going to be a long and photo-filled blog post today. There is just so much I'd like to share with you! I have interesting postcards, beautiful stamps and photos from our walk/climb to the castle in Jaen. 

First off is a postcard I received from China. It was sent by Kirilenko, who is a geology student. She says the card shows a recipe of  "shrimp ravioli". 

I think we call them ' shrimp won-tons'. 

The stamps are beautiful. On the left is the 2016 Expo and the two on the right are from the series of Chines filial piety. Now that is a mouth full and I had no idea what that was:

Filial piety is considered a key virtue in Chinese and other East Asian cultures, and it is the main subject of many stories. It  is central to Confucian role ethics.

In more general terms, filial piety means to be good to one's parents; to take care of one's parents; to engage in good conduct not just towards parents but also outside the home so as to bring a good name to one's parents and ancestors; to show love, respect and support; display courtesy; to ensure male heirs, uphold fraternity among brothers; wisely advise one's parents, including dissuading them from moral unrighteousness; display sorrow for their sickness and death; to bury them and carry out sacrifices after their death.

The second card comes from Singapore and pictures the ball room at the old Raffles hotel.

Raffles Hotel is a colonial-style luxury hotel in Singapore. It was established by Armenian hoteliers, the Sarkies Brothers, in 1887. The hotel was named after British statesman Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, the founder of Singapore. 

 It still exists today and has been refurbished this year:
The hotel reopened its doors today (Aug 1, 2019) after a two-year revamp, which saw the 132-year-old grand dame given a fresh coat of paint and new white marble flooring in its interior. The air-conditioning system also underwent an upgrade.
The last restoration done to the hotel was from 1989 to 1991. 

 And this is what the ball room looks like today.

The stamps are lovely. On the right is the Christmas log and on the left is a man sitting at a table. (No idea what that is all about)

Now, lets have a look at my photos from the walk up to the cross. (see last week).

So, we finally made it all the way to the top, and we found a beautiful castle, which was open to the public. This kind chappie sold us our tickets (1.50 Eur each) and then came out of his booth and explained a few things to us and showed us which way to go first. His English was not very good, so I translated for the other two couples that were there too.

There were several rooms to visit and each had exhibits and/or video presentations about the history. 

 This was the ceiling of one of the rooms.

 The cross that we had seen from below is behind the furthest tower.

 Here we can see it. Fortunately there was a path to the cross.

 And the views were spectacular!

 We actually made it all the way to the cross, but some other people were there at the same time as us, and the platform is only small, so I couldn't take any pictures without capturing the other people as well.

 The path back from the cross took us along the side of the castle.

 Lovely little walkways (in the shade).

That was our day in Jaen.

And as it is T-Day today, I need a qualifier to join the T-Party, hosted by Bleubeard and Elizabeth. So here I am last Sunday, after church, having a coffee and a Baileys. As you can see, the temperatures here have dropped a bit too and I'm wearing a cardigan.

Well done if you have made it this far. I really appreciate it.

Have a very happy T-Day all!

Hugs,

Lisca