A Swissair Caravelle, A Sarcophagus Lid, The Beatles and Cuba Cards

BLOG # 1587 --- Day 878 of the Pandemic --- Day 163 of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine

                                                           GLORY TO UKRAINE

Hey there postcard people.  Here we go again with a few postcards to look at. First up is a card from France. It's a view of Niederbronn-les-Bains, a commune in north Alsace, in north-eastern France, close to the German frontier. It was founded in 48 BC when the Romans discovered the healing proprties of the local water. 

Dominique used a recent stamp from May. It was issued to commemorate the 500th Anniversary of the Death of Anne of France, or as I like to say , the 561st anniversary of Anne's birth. 

My second card today is a dream card if you collect aircraft on postcards. Eleven aircraft on the front of the card.  Wow !!  It can't get much better . The aircraft in the foreground is a Swissair Sud Aviation Caravelle. The Caravelle was a French jet airliner produced in the early 1950s. It had it's first flight in May 1955. A total of 282 Caravelles were produced. The last flight of a Caravelle was in 2005. That's 50 years of Caravelle flight. On a personal note -- I flew on a Caravelle between Lisbon and Faro , Portugal many years ago, 

Meelis used a number of stamps on this card. The small Yellow stamp on the left is from 2017. It is 1 of 3 Post Horn definitives issued with the 2017 date. The large middle stamp shows local Fauna - the Black Rat. The right stamp , from 2021, also features Fauna - the Stoat. 

Today's third card is from Belgium. It shows the sarcophagus lid of the coffin of Khonsutefnacht. It dates from the 4th century BC and can be seen at the Royal Museum of Art and History in Brussels. Of note are the large eyes and reddish brown color of the skin. 

Johan used a stamp, matching the card,  issued in June. It is 1 of 5 in a set celebrating Jean Capart and Egyptology in Belgium. 

These next two cards are the last for this time. I'm sure you heard the expression "better late than never". That is certainly the case here.  My Lovely Teena and I visited Varadero, Cuba in March. With the help of Roxana, a young lady working at the hotel we were staying at, I posted, actually,  Roxana took the cards to Matanzas and posted the cards at the post office in her hometown. Well months past and there was no sign of the cards. Then about 2 months or so after posting a few cards started to show up , the first in Spain, then Germany. Later cards arrived in France, Belgium, Netherlands, Ireland, Philippines  and Sri Lanka. Of course the last cards to arrive were those to Canada - 4.5 months after posting. Obviously , the fact that Canada is closest of all those countries to Cuba never played any part in the disposition of the cards. My guess is that they were all dispatched to Spain and then dispersed from there back across the pond. Anyway I'm glad they finally arrived. Again , they say " anything worth having is worth waiting for " .  

The first of these two cards show Ringo, John, George and Paul standing in from of  The Beatles Bar and Restaurant in Varadero. 

The stamp on this one is actually a one stamp souvenir sheet. It was issued in 2010 to mark the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, China. The sheet itself shows a Cubana Vickers Viscount. The stamp shows a Handley Page 42E, of which only 8 were built. They flew from 1931 to 1940. 

The second Cuba card shows a few of the old buildings in Havana , with a big old American car from the 1950s or 60s. You can see lots of these old cars in Cuba. 

An interesting set of stamps arrived on this card. Well , 4 of the set of 6 at least. They were issued in 1991 to commemorate the 30th Anniversary of the First Man in Space, Yuri Gagarin. Gagarin is shown on the left stamp. 

All of this is wonderful of course, but you know me, I always find something to complain about. It's great that the Cuba cards arrived, Lord knows I waited long enough for them. It would have been perfect if the lady in the Matanzas Post Office had seen fit to postmark / cancel the stamps. I would have even taken a pen cancel over no cancel. But I guess you can't have everything ! 

 Big thanks for todays fine cards go out to Dominique, Meelis, Johan, My Lovely Teena and Roxana for her help in Cuba. 

Thank you all.