A Postcard A Day - Friday 31 March 2017 - Friday Smiles

Hello lovely people,

I'm sorry I missed last week. We were away and the site we were on didn't have wifi (I did have my laptop with me...)

It was my birthday and we decided to get away for a few days in our campervan.

We were in a small village called Canjáyar in the Almerian Alpujarras. The village had walking routes with arrowed tiles on the ground:

We enjoyed the tranquility and the mild weather.

A little drinking fountain in the street.

Just a beautiful tree.

My postcard today comes from the Ukraine:

It is sent to me by Oksana, who lives in Kiev because there is a very good art school there for her daughter. The card is about Chernihiv and gives fun facts about that city. She thought I would like to know that there is an underground cave church in Chernihiv.

The stamps are gorgeous:

The stamp on the right features the succulent Graptopetalum Bellum, or Chihuahua plant. The one on the left is a Hippophae rhamnoides, also known as common sea buckthorn, a desiduous shrub.

Now for some smiles:

Please join me at Annie's A Stitch In Time with something to smile about. 

Later today we will be going to a wedding, a very low key affair at the local bar. So more photos next week. Also we are in the process of buying a new car, which we should be able to collect on Tuesday, so more to smile about. (It's the first time in my life that I/we will own a new car!)

Have a great week everyone.
Wishing you lots of smiles,
Lisca

A Postcard A Day - Tuesday 28 March - T for European history, campervan and Riesling

Hello lovely people, How are you all? Thank you for visiting me today. 

We've been away for a few days and I have some photos to show you as well as my usual postcard from some faraway country.

I received several cards this week. Which one shall I share with you?

This card comes from Russia, from someone called Zoya who lives in St Petersburg. The image is a caricature of European politics in 1899. I wish I could remember my European history. The image is supposed to be funny. She used some really beautiful stamps which unfortunately, I forgot to scan...

So, last week my husband asked what i wanted to do for my birthday. I suggested we go away, so we did. We went to an area we hadn't been to before, and found a campervan parking 

in a village called Canjayar, in the Almerian Alpujarras.

Here is the village in the distance. It was very pretty and it had all sorts of info on the village history displayed on tiles on the walls of the streets:

There was a public washing facility:

Can you imagine the natter and the gossip!

I'm so thankful for washing machines after seeing this!

My lovely hubby spoils me and on the first day he cooked a fantastic "Full English Breakfast" for lunch. (I can't face this first thing in the morning).

There's bacon and eggs, baked beans and whole tomatoes. Of course with toasted bread.

We do this only when we are on holiday and it is a real treat! In this case we had a bottle of dry Riesling set aside for the occasion.

I suppose this qualifies me for the T-Party hosted by Elizabeth and Bluebeard. Please join us if you can with a post that has something drink related in it. (doesn't have to be tea or coffee)

I'm going to leave it at that and next week I will post more photos.

Happy T-Day all,

Hugs,

Lisca

A Postcard A Day - Tuesday 21 March 2017 - T for ... literateurs

Hi Folks,
Here we are again on Tuesday. 

I received a lovely postcard from Lithuania this week, which I would like to share with you:

It was sent by Zydrolè, (who now lives in Berlin. Yes, that's confusing)). She writes: "This card shows one street in Vilnius, Lithuania. A group of artists had an idea to revive the street and decorate it with artworks related to litterateurs. You can see on the wall various small objects made of metal, wood, glass etc in the honour of litterateurs. "

Yes, I puzzled about this word 'litterateurs' and looked it up. The Oxford dictionary defines it as: A person who is interested in and knowledgeable about literature. Merriam-Webster: a literary person; especially :  a professional writer. 

I found this photo on the internet. For everyone who reads Lithuanian literature, this place is like a temple. Artworks mounted on the walls of the Literatu street (Literatų gatvė) are dedicated to the literature workers: writers, translators, everyone who has link with Lithuania and is important for Lithuanian or world literature.

How interesting...

The weather here in Spain has improved again (since we had the snow) and we are able to eat outside again. Yesterday I made a quinoa chilli and found some mince meat in the freezer so i made some burgers, which hubby cooked on the BBQ. So my contribution to Elizabeth's T-party is this:

Our drink is Radler, my favorite beer when the weather is warm. It is cloudy as it has lemon juice in it.

Cheers! Me dears!

I have some more awesome street art to show you:

It can be found in Toulouse (France) and was made by Hendrik Beikirch in 2016.

One more thing I'd like to show you is this:

Many of you will have heard of the artist Denthe. She has a blog that I love to follow. She also publishes calenders (I have one on the wall). Lately she has started to create art on old maps and I just love what she is doing. This is her blog: http://denthe.blogspot.com.es/

The quotes are good too.

It is very early on Tuesday morning as I am writing this. I'm going to bed to sleep a few hours, then up early as we are going away again for a couple of days in our campervan. It is my birthday on Thursday so it is a little birthday treat really. I don't want a present, as I have all i could ever want. So just being out and about in nature and a bit of sunshine is a lovely present. (Consequently I won't be able to comment until Friday as the campsite we are going to does not have electricity or wifi. Hope you don't mind...)

Please join me at Elizabeth and Bleubeards's T-party. 

Happy T-Day,
Have a good week,
Lisca

A Postcard A Day - Friday 17 March - Friday Smiles

Hello peeps,

I hope you are all well. Gosh, this week has really flown by and I haven't really done anything particular. Do you ever have that feeling? A week has past and I don't have anything to show for it. Let me tell you about my week and the things that made me smile (and the things that didn't).

Here is my postcard for today. It comes from Latvia. Wikipedia informs me that Latvia is a country on the Baltic Sea between Lithuania and Estonia. Its landscape is marked by wide beaches as well as dense, sprawling forests. Latvia’s capital is Riga, home to notable wooden and art nouveau architecture, a vast Central Market and a medieval Old Town with St. Peter's Church. Riga's museums include the Latvian Ethnographic Open-Air Museum, showcasing local crafts, food and music. 

I love windows and doors, so this card is spot-on! A big smile!

The stamps are very nice too:

The stamp on the right is about a car racing track. (I looked it up). 

The track in red is for cars and the grey bit on the left is the track for motorbikes, and the little squiggly bit near the start is the go-kart track.

What have I been up to then? 

Friday I made a birthday card for our little grandson who will be one year old soon. I can't show you the card until his birthday. 

Saturday is baking day in our house and this time I made a large quiche Lorraine, to take to our housegroup meeting on Sunday. (Sorry, no photo either. I'm not doing very well here)

On Sunday, apart from going to church and going to housegroup, we usually Skype with family in Holland or UK. I use Skype to phone landlines, so I get charged (we're talking pennies). My account automatically gets topped up when it gets below a certain amount. Well, for some reason it didn't do that, so I spent Sunday trying to sort that out. Turns out that my card expires at the end of March, but they have already stopped payments. I haven't got my new card yet either. What a mess.

Then after a weekend of glorious weather, this happened on Monday:

Snow! And lots of it! Crazy weather!

As every Monday afternoon, we traveled to our little cave house in the country.We braved the snow (we have a 4x4 vehicle) But because of the bad weather there was no power at our cave house. We don't mind that so much as we have a log fire and a gas lamp. So I spent the evening reading and doing my jigsaw. More smiles.

On Tuesday, after a lie-in and some snow shoveling, we went to our favorite restaurant at 2 pm for a meal. More smiles. We went home again in the afternoon and did grocery shopping on the way.

Wednesday the weather was back to normal, so much so that we could cook the chicken on the gas BBQ that we have on the terrace. Big smile.

Yesterday I was lazy and spent all afternoon sitting in the sun reading my book. Huge smile! I'm reading Wilbur Smith's The Seventh Scroll.

I have already read River Gods which precedes it. Sofar it's a good yarn.
This afternoon I will be going with a group of ladies from the village, to a hot thermal pool that we have in our area. (I´m already smiling) It's open air, but the water is hot so I am looking forward to a dip. I don't dare take my new camera in case it gets wet or stolen, but I will take my phone at take pictures if I can.

That's my week and my smiles, which I'm going to share with Annie at A Stitch in Time and with Virginia at Rocking Your WorldFriday. Please join us if you can.

Have a good week with lots of smiles,
Hugs,
Lisca

A Potcard A Day - Tueday 14 March - T for butterflies, beaches and a flowering pine

Hello lovely T-Gang! 

We have experienced an extreme change of temperature in 24 hours. Yesterday I was dressed in a t-shirt, having meals on the terrace in the blistering sun. Today the temperature is  around freezing point and it has been snowing heavily since this morning.

This is my postcard for today. It came from India. It shows a beautiful butterfly. It's called the Constable. The Constable (Dichorragia nesmachus) is a species of Nymphalid butterfly found in Asia. There is a wide distribution range extending from India in the west to Japan in the east. This butterfly has a wingspan of 7.0-8.0 cm. Isn't it gorgeous? I love the colour.


It's T for Tuesday so I will link up with Elizabeth at Altered Book Lover and show my drink. But before I do that I would like to share some more photos of our recent little trip to Cartagena. Here is a photo of some modern architecture:

It's the local police station.

It certainly is a city of palm trees:

On the second day we visited the mining museum (see previous blog) in a village called La Union. I spotted this remarkable building there:

When I got close enough to read the writing, I learnt that it was the covered market.

It has an entrance on each side. This is the side and the back, where the car park is. The main entrance was even more spectacular, but it was in a narrow street and I could not get a decent shot of it.
I did notice the crooked top....

We looked around for a place to eat and in a little back street we found this unassuming bar/eatery:

The meal was cheap and cheerful. In Spain we get the so-called menu del dia, which is a three course meal served between 2 and 4pm and includes wine or beer and desert.
This was our first course:

I had a potato salad and hubby spaghetti a la carbonara. The mixed salad is to go with the main course. We were drinking lager with lemon (the lemon juice makes it cloudy).

On the last day of our trip we went to the Calblanque natural park and walked along the (touristically) undeveloped beaches.

This beach is known for its fossilized dunes.

The rocks behind my husband were sandy dunes in geological past.
The flowers on the beach were magnificent. This is an Asphodel:

And there were pines growing that seemed to be in flower:

We've had several power outs while I was writing this (It always does that when it snows heavily, I suppose the weight of the snow on the local powerlines....)
So I hope I get to post this. 

Wishing you a happy T-Day all,
Hugs
Lisca

A Postcard A Day - Friday 10 March 2017 - Friday smiles.

Hello dear people, how are you all? 
It seems summer has arrived here in Spain. Boy, it's been so sunny and hot these last few days. That's not fair I hear you say...

Lets look at my card for today. It is a card I am sending from here. I've been writing it tonight and it is going to the USA. It's one of those typical houses in the old part of town and it has a beautiful wooden balcony. 

Baza is our nearest town. We were there yesterday and I shot this picture:

It's not the same house, but the same idea.

So what has happened this week.... Well, Friday we were still on holiday and we visited a beautiful natural park on the coast.

 Completely undeveloped. It featured fossil dunes, which I was keen to see.

And this tall plant. Kate Perry might know what it is...

Isn't it beautiful.

Saturday is baking day usually, but I didn't bake anything that Saturday. In the afternoon I went to Intercambio, to practice my Spanish. It was really cold in the upper room where we meet, so someone suggested we go to a nearby bar! Which we did.

Sunday is taken up with church and Bible study. We had a dedication in our church. (Children get baptized when they can decide for themselves, so a new born gets 'dedicated'.)

Everyone has their eyes closed because I think they just started to pray as I took the picture.

On Monday we went into town as I needed some embroidery thread. There is only one milleners in town and this is it:

They also sell yarn and fabric:

I tried to take pictures of the window display which had the famous Spanish mantilla combs with lace displayed.But there was too much reflection. The combs look like this (internet photo):

It is worn in the Easter week (Semana Santa) with a lace veil (another internet photo):

On Wednesday we went to the market. Hubby bought a couple of belts:

We had lots of little things to do that morning, the most important one was renewing hybby's driving license. It is only valid for 5 years. We didn't know that and inadvertedly let his heavy vehicle license expire. (In the UK you have your driving license for life). Bummer. Hopefully he won't need to drive anything bigger than our campervan.

After doing all our errands, we sat down to have a coffee and a bun. The weather is unseasonally hot, but that's nice, I'm not complaining.

I'm still wearing my gym shirt as we left straight from the gym.

I think I'll leave it at that. I'm off to visit Annie at A Stitch in Time and Virginia at Rocking your Week Friday.

Hugs,
Lisca