After Christmas Update

Welcome to this my first update after Christmas. I am hoping to get another one in before year's end. Before I actually get into this one I just want to welcome Shannon as another reader. He left a comment on the update for 23 Dec, saying that he had found my blog . He is actually my mailman, he delivers my mail, my postcards into my mailbox. So he is an important part to this blog and to my postcard collection. So, welcome Shannon, I hope you can visit the blog often and make sure my postcards get to the right mailbox.

Now onto the cards. I have four for today. These are the cards that arrived Dec 24th, the last date for mail here in Canada. Next mail should be tomorrow. If I am wrong here, I'm sure Shannon can correct me. The cards are from Vatican City, Morocco, Morocco again and Romania. Only the Romania card is from a Postcrosser. The other three are from my brother Dale. I wrote in my update of Dec 20th that I was expecting just one more card from Dale, and I expected it to be from Morocco. Well, I found three cards from him in the mailbox on Christmas Eve, the one from The Vatican and two from Morocco.

Let's look at the Vatican card first. It gives us a couple of views of St. Peter's Basilica. Located in Vatican City, St. Peter's can hold 60,000 people. It is regarded as one of the holiest Catholic sites and the greatest of all churches of Christendom. Construction on St. Peter's started on April 18, 1506 and was completed on Nov 18, 1626. Dale used two Vatican City stamps on his card. The first was issued in 2002 and is 1 of a set of 4 featuring paintings by the Italian painter Cimabue. The other stamp , issued in 2004, is 1 of 15 featuring Euro coins and their countries.

Dale's second card is from Casablanca, Morocco. It gives us a view of the clock tower of Medina and a wonderful street scene of the city of Casablanca. The city is Morocco's largest and its chief port, the largest in North Africa. The stamp here is the 2009 International Year of Astronomy issue.

Card # 3 , also from Dale, shows us some work by Pablo Picasso. Dale picked up this card in Barcelona, Spain but posted it from Casablanca. He describes Barcelona as a fantastic city, beautiful and modern, with incredible architecture. The 2009 issued stamp is from a set of 2 featuring fish.

Here is the final card and it comes from Romania. It shows us the Memorandistilor Monument located in Cluj-Napoca, the fourth most populous city in Romania.It is located in the north west part of the country and is considered the unofficial capital of the province of Transylvania. The monument is built on Union Square , on the corner of Avenue Heroes. It was built in honor of The Memorandum of Transylvania. It was a petition sent in 1882 by leaders of the Romanians in Transylvania to Frans Josef demanding equal rights for ethnic Hungarians. All I know about the stamp is that it was issued this year and features grapes and some sort of jug.

I think that's it for this time. Depending on what shows up in the mailbox, I hope to have another update before year's end.
Take care .