A Postcard A Day - Tuesday 6 Nov 2018 - T for Camino, pomegranates and a football stadium

Hello Tuesday girls, here we are again. Today I am going to join the T-party with a fruit drink. (but more of that later). In the meantime, if you would like to join me, saunter over to Altered Book Lover  with a beverage, where Elizabeth and Buebeard will welcome you to the T-Party.

But first a postcard that I received from the north of Spain. It features the Camino de Santiago known in English as the Way of Saint James, and it is a network of pilgrims' ways or pilgrimages leading to the shrine of the apostle Saint James the Great in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia in northwestern Spain, where tradition has it that the remains of the saint are buried. Wikipedia writes: Many follow its routes as a form of spiritual path or retreat for their spiritual growth. It is also popular with hiking and cycling enthusiasts and organized tour groups. 

 Today, hundreds of thousands (over 300,000 in 2017) of Christian pilgrims and many others set out each year from their homes, or from popular starting points across Europe, to make their way to Santiago de Compostela. Most travel by foot, some by bicycle, and a few travel as some of their medieval counterparts did, on horseback or by donkey. In addition to those undertaking a religious pilgrimage, many are hikers who walk the route for travel or sport. Also, many consider the experience a spiritual retreat from modern life.

The scallop shell, often found on the shores in Galicia, has long been the symbol of the Camino de Santiago. Over the centuries the scallop shell has taken on a variety of meanings, metaphorical, practical, and mythical meanings, even if its relevance may have actually derived from the desire of pilgrims to take home a souvenir. Of course there are legends relating the scallop:
 After James' death, his disciples shipped his body to the Iberian Peninsula to be buried in what is now Santiago. Off the coast of Spain, a heavy storm hit the ship, and the body was lost to the ocean. After some time, however, it washed ashore undamaged, covered in scallops

 This is the stamp that was on the card. And no, it is not the cathderal of Santiago de Compostella. The writing says: 12 months, 12 stamps. Cathedral of Léon (Léon). The girl that sent me the card lives in Léon.

Here in Spain it is pomegranate time! They grow here of course. I live in the province of Granada and pomegranate means 'apple of Granada'. I have been taught the trick of cutting them and we had juice every day this week.

I opened them, then beat them with a large wooden spoon until all the seeds have fallen out:

 Then I put them in the juicer and with two pomegranates we each had a glass full of lovely juice.

Very healthy too they say.

I still haven't shown you all the photos from the trip. The following photos are from our visit to Bilbao, where we stayed a couple of nights in a delightful hotel (just outside the city but with a metro station nearby):

 It was in the foothills of the mountains. Beautiful.

We took the metro from the large Exhibition Centre, a short drive from our hotel. It had a huge car park, which was almost free for metro passengers (0.70 eur). We travelled to Bilbao city and this is the first thing we saw:

 It is the footbal (soccer) stadium in the middle of the city. Very impressive. The man at the hotel reception had told us that there was a cafe/bar inside, so we went in for a coffee.

The Bilbao team is called Athletic Club

All the players are represented by their shirts behind me.

Above the bar there were huge screens to watch the matches I suppose.

 And from where we were sitting we had an excellent view of the pitch, which was being watered and I don't know what else.

Finally the sign in the underground car park which is written in Euskara, the language of the Basque country. It is their official language and most signage will have Spanish as well, but not everywhere! I obviously cannot make head nor tail of it and it can be a bit disconcerting at times seeing a 'weird' language around me all the time.

This is what Wikipedia says about Euskara: A language isolate, Basque is believed to be one of the few surviving pre-Indo-European languages in Europe, and is the only one in Western Europe. The origin of the Basques and of their languages is not conclusively known, though the most accepted current theory is that early forms of Basque developed prior to the arrival of Indo-European languages in the area, including the Romance languages that geographically surround the Basque-speaking region. Basque has adopted a good deal of its vocabulary from the Romance languages, and Basque speakers have in turn lent their own words to Romance speakers.

I hope you enjoyed my little outing to Bilbao. More about Bilbao next week.

PS The pay machines in the large car park were not working and we were issued a ticket to lift the barrier without having to pay! Hurray! (Well, I think we saved 0.70 eur)

Wishing you all a very happy T-Day,
Hugs,
Lisca

A Postcard A Day - Friday 2 Nov 2018 - Friday Smiles

Hello friends, 
Sorry I am late in joining you this morning. Normally I prepare my blog on Thursday night but I needed to make some cards that had to be posted last night. A birthday card for my grandson in Italy, and sadly two sympathy cards. So I spent all night making those. 

 I found this frog pop-up on the internet and copied it by hand. Then I cut the large 4 and continued the theme there. I hope he likes it.

 These are the two sympathy cards:

And I also made a birthday card for my daughter-in-law. I don't think she reads my blog, so here it is:

As you can see I am not an accomplished or arty, trendy card maker. I make cards because I can't buy them here. Out of necessity really.

My week has been busy. We are moving from downstairs to upstairs as the weather has definitely turned. It goes from warm and sunny to positively icy winter! This was the view from our house the other day (not my photo, but the same view):

Snow on the hills. (4000 ft).

We have no heating in the downstairs flat so now we are toasty and warm with a woodburner and an almond shell burner.

Also I have my nice big cooker and oven upstairs, and am happy as larry cooking nice things in my kitchen. I found a recipe for meatballs with gravy, trying to emulate the Ikea meatballs in a low fat way. (we are trying to lose weight). This is the result:

They were delicious. The recipe is from Slimming Eats, a blog that I follow. This is the link if you are interested.

I have no postcards to show you, but here are a few Spanish stamps that were for sale last week. 

 We pay 1,35 eur for post within Europe.

 The C tarif is for the rest of the world and at the moment costs me 1,45 eur.

 The B tarif is the Europe tarif, see above. The stamp below with the bridge on it is very unusual in that the white bit is cut out. And it is very large so I have to put the stamp on before I start writing otherwise the will be no room left.

I will be linking up with Annie's Friday Smile at A Stitch In Time and with Virginia at Rocking Your Week Friday. My smiles are at the end of  blogpost.

That is it from me this morning. Have a lovely weekend, and...

Keep smiling!

Lisca

A Postcard A Day - Tuesday 30 October 2018 - T for books, canyons and breakfast

Hello everyone! How are you all? Are you ready for the T-Party? Elizabeth and Bluebeard at Altered Book Lover are waiting to read any blog post with a beverage in it. 

I will jump right in with this fascinating stamp. It is from Ireland as you can see and it has the image of a very old looking bowl. I looked it up and this is what I found (Wikipedia):

The Keshcarrigan Bowl is an Iron age bronze bowl discovered to the north of Keshcarrigan, county Leitrim, Ireland, in the 19th century. It was perhaps a ceremonial drinking cup.The bowl would have been a prestigious item in the 1st century Ireland, the bird-shaped handle outstandingly designed and skillfully executed. The Keshcarrigan Bowl is preserved and displayed at the archaeology branch of the National museum of Ireland.

The stamp was on this card:

It was sent to me by Tina, who is from Finland, but was on holiday in Galway, Ireland. The book on the card is Spanish. That is all I can decipher as there is an 'airmail' sticker on the description. I tried unsuccessfully to pull it off. As the postcard has 'Uppsala universitets bibliotek' written on it (Uppsala  (Sweden) university library), I assume the book is part of their collection.

The next card was sent to me by a lovely lady in Holland. She had read that I like old travel posters and has sent me this one from Bryce Canyon National Park.  Elizabeth will love the colours, as she likes rust. I remember visiting Bryce Canyon in 2001. An exhilerating experience. Beautiful.

This is the info on the back of the card:

"Works Progress Administration (WPA),                             Artists: Doug Leen - Brian Maebius

Between 1935 and 1943, the WPA's Federal Art Project printed over two million posters in 35,000 different designs to stir the public's imagination for education, theater, health, safelty, and travel. Due to their fragile nature only two thousand posters have survived. This contemporary design illustrates many of the WPA era posters, including those of our National Parks."

The stamps are from the Netherlands. The stamp on the right was issued on the 24th of Septenber 2012 to celebrate the re-opening of the Stedelijk Museum (City Museum) in Amsterdam. This particular one features the zigzag chair (version 1) designed by Gerrit Rietveld in 1932.  The stamp on the left people have paid a little bit more for to support the children's charities in the Netherlands.

I also would like to share a few more photos of our trip to the UK last month. We travelled from the very south of Spain to the very north to catch a direct ferry to Portsmouth in the UK. Here we are in the port of Bilbao, waiting to drive onto the ferry.

The journey took a day and a half. We would arrive at 8:30 pm. Our first destination was 4 hours drive away, so we had decided to spend the night in a hotel. This is the one I booked. And very nice it was too.

It was called Lodge at Solent. The Solent being the strait that seperates the Isle of White with mainland England. Our room was the first one on the ground floor (behind the red car).

We slept well and in the morning enjoyed an excellent breakfast:

In the foyer of the hotel we found this fun arty structure. Of course I had to sit on it straight away and pretend the sun was shining!

That was it from me today. As you have seen, there are lots of drinks references. 

Wishing you all a very happy T-Day,

Hugs,

Lisca

A Postcard A Day - Friday 26 Oct 2018 - Friday Smiles

Hello Friday gals! 

Here I am again with some postcards, something about our life in Spain and of course some funnies. Please join me at Annie's A Stitch In Time with your smiles, or tell us about your week at Virginia's Rocking Your World Friday.

First off some cards. This one comes from Germany. It was sent by 35 year old Andreas, who likes soccer and model trains (apart from postcards of course):

Here is some info about the town copied from Wikipedia: 

Quedlinburg  is a town situated just north of the Harz mountains, (in the former DDR) Germany. It became part of the state of Saxony-Anhalt upon German reunification in 1990.

It was first mentioned as a town in 922 as part of a donation by King Henry the Fowler (Heinrich der Vogler). 

According to legend, Henry had been offered the German crown at Quedlinburg in 919 by Franconian nobles, giving rise to the town being called the "cradle of the German Reich".

After Henry's death in 936, his widow Saint Matilda founded a religious community for women (Frauenstift) on the castle hill, where daughters of the higher nobility were educated. The main task of this collegiate foundation, Quedlinburg Abbey, was to pray for the memory of King Henry and the rulers who came after him. 

During the Nazi regime, the memory of Henry I became a sort of cult, as Heinrich Himmler saw himself as the reincarnation of the "most German of all German" rulers. The collegiate church and castle were to be turned into a shrine for Nazi Germany. The Nazi Party tried to create a new religion. The cathedral was closed from 1938 and during the war.  Liberation in 1945 brought back the Protestant bishop and the church bells, and the Nazi-style eagle was taken down from the tower.

 In 1994, the castle, church and old town were added to the UNESCO World Heritage List.

This was the stamp on the card, a nice view of the Mosel river.

The second card is from the USA. It shows majestic redwood trees. I find it a bit of a mystery as it has these beautiful flowers on it, but I can't find any info on flowering redwoods, if they indeed flower. Has anyone got any idea? 

Sunday I was away with our local photoclub for a day in Granada. The Granada photoclub was celebrating its 25th anniversary and they had organised several exhibitions and other events to do with photography. 

The weather was lovely and walking from one venue to the next gave lots of photo opportunities. Here is one of my favorite subjects: beautiful doors.

Here is another door. This is in the Moorish style:

That is it from me this morning. I wish you all a really nice weekend and I leave you with the last of the American funnies. (I hope I haven't showed you these before, I've lost count)

Hugs,

Lisca