Thursday, September 2, 2010

Namibia, France, Latvia , Switzerland and the Faroe Islands

The title of this update tells you where today's cards come from. So without further ado let's get to them.
Namibia is up first. The card shows a Quiver tree forest in Southern Namibia. Quiver trees or Kokerboom is a species of aloe found in Namibia and South Africa. This card was sent by Dave and Lizzy van B travelling in the area. They used a very nice round 2010 stamp from a FIFA World Cup multi sheet with 9 different stamps.
Card # 2 is from France and was sent by a Postcrosser living in Fontainebleau. Located 55 kms from Paris, the chateau was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1981. Frederique used 2 stamps from a 2010 booklet of 12 featuring Roman Art.
The next card comes to us from Latvia. This beach scene is on the Baltic sea. Silvia who sent this card says most beaches in Latvia are sandy but this rocky one seems to have caught the photographer's eye. Silvia used a 2005 stamp from a set of 2 featuring coat of arms and a 2010 bird stamp , also from a set of 2.
The Matterhorn is shown on the next card from Switzerland. This is a mountain in the Alps on the border between Switzerland and Italy. It's summit is at 4,478 metres. Pamela who lives in Bulle sent this card and she of course is a PostCrosser. Pamela says that Switzerland is the land of cheese and chocolate. Those aren't the first things that come to my mind when I think of Switzerland, but I guess they are quite high on the list. Again a bird stamp was used on this card. It was issued in 2007 and is 1 of a set of 4.
Today's final card is from The Faroe Islands. It was sent by John at the Faroe Islands Tourist Board. It is a very tranquil picture of a dory floating on the sea. Reminds me of many places around my home province of Newfoundland on Canada's east coast. John used 3 stamps from the 1990s on this very large postcard. I actually cropped it when I scanned it. The stamp on the left was issued in 1995 and is 1 of 2 Europa stamps issued for Peace and Freedom. The stamp in the middle is a landscapes issue from 1996. The stamp on the right is from a 1998 booklet of 10 stamps celebrating Nes Church.

Oh, I almost forgot, it's now September, so that must mean it's time for my August postcard report. I'm sure this is of little interest to most everyone else, but it's now a regular feature here on the blog. So here goes. During August I received a total of 50 postcards. This is the largest number for a month since April of 2009, August was certainly a banner month. Of this 50, 29 were from PostCrossers. I mailed out 27 cards during the month and all but 2 were to PostCrossers. Finally, I increased my country total by 3 new countries or stamp issuing entities , making it now a grand total of 241. August was indeed a good month.

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