A Postcard A Day - Tuesday 29 April 2025 - T for pearl earrings, penguins and bluebells.

Hello lovely peeps,

T-Day has arrived again! It's Tuesday and I am still traveling. More about that later.

Let me show you my postcard.

It's a gorgeous take on The Girl with the Pearl Earring by Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer in 1665.

Girl with a Pearl Earring is Vermeer’s most famous painting. It is not a portrait, but a ‘tronie’ – a painting of an imaginary figure. Tronies depict a certain type or character; in this case a girl in exotic dress, wearing an oriental turban and an improbably large pearl in her ear.

Johannes Vermeer was the master of light. This is shown here in the softness of the girl’s face and the glimmers of light on her moist lips. And of course, the shining pearl.

The postcard is designed by Dina who is a Postcrosser from the Netherlands. In fact this card was sent to me at a meeting (in person, not online) of Postcrossers where they send postcards and they all sign the card with their name or Postcrossing name.

They all met on the 22 of March this year at De Gele Kameel (the Yellow Camel) which is a café which serves pancakes and soup and snacks. Here is a photo from the Internet:

I have never been to a meet-up, but have put my name down for one in Granada in September. (Watch this space).

The stamps are gorgeous:

There are the typical Dutch windmills and at the top you can see council flats in Maastricht, built in 1950 (architect Dingemans) as part of the re-building of the country after the war. It's part of a series of stamps about the reconstruction:

 The stamp website writes this:

The Maastricht Municipal Flat has been given a place on the new stamp sheet of PostNL. Het Nieuwe Instituut (National Archives for Dutch Architecture and Urban Planning), PostNL and designer Ariënne Boelens chose buildings with the following functions for this stamp sheet: infrastructure, home, office, factory and education. The depicted buildings can still be admired by the public and show real characteristics from the reconstruction period in form, appearance and functionality.

The flats have been restored and look like this now:

I've been traveling again. I was in the UK for the past week. I got the bus to Malaga and then got a flight to Bristol. I don't like flying. It's boring. Too much hanging around. I passed the time by having a large cider and some crisps.

I visited my eldest son:

He lives not far from Bath. We went to the cinema one afternoon.

We saw a film called The Penguin Lessons.

It is based on a true story and is set in Argentina in 1976, during a coup and political turmoil.

Based on the memoir and true story of a disillusioned Englishman who went to work in a school in Argentina in 1976, Tom (Coogan), expecting an easy ride, discovers a divided nation and a class of unteachable students. However, after he rescues a penguin from an oil-slicked beach, his life is turned upside-down.

I met friends while I was in the UK and one set of friends loves walking, so we had a walk through a park to see the bluebells, but there only ere a few dotted around, not a forest full of them as I had hoped.

Below another few, but they are not at all easy to spot (as they are so few).

Below is a flower called 

Red Campion

I have now arrived in Italy and have heard there has been a power outage in Spain, Portugal and part of France. What the heck is all that about?

Here in Italy, there doesn't seem to be a problem.

I'm calling it a day now. I've been traveling all day. I'm going to bed now. 

Happy T-Day all.

Lisca