Three Nice Cards With Great Stamps

As Arnold says I'm back , but just barely. I have been a little under the weather these past three days. I have a cold and it's not going well. I have been able to get to the mailbox though , so I guess I'll survive. I have three cards to have a look at this time. They come from Zimbabwe, Italy and Portugal , and as I mentioned in the title , all of them have nice stamps.

Before getting to the cards though, I do have that important monthly duty to complete. January is now a thing of the past and therefore it's time for my January Postcard report. I know all you regular readers have been waiting on the edge of your seats for this, so lets get to it. During the month of January I received a total of 57 postcards, my best month since I started in march of 2006. Of the 57, only 33 came from Postcrossers. I sent out a total of 38 cards last month and 23 of them went to Postcrossers. No new countries were added to my collection in January. I know sometimes I complain that postcards are sometimes slow in coming and sometimes days go by with out a card in the mailbox, but 57 cards in January, that was a banner month.

First up this time is a card from Zimbabwe. It shows us some of the wildlife of the country. We see elephants, a zebra, giraffes , cheetahs, a lion and a baboon at sunset. Bruce from South Africa recently travelled to Zimbabwe and was kind enough to pop this card in the mail. The stamps include a bird definitive , from a set of 10 issued in 2005 and a stamp commemorating 30 years of the Pan African Postal Union issued last year.

Card number 2 is from Italy. It gives us a wonderful view of Isola dei Pescatori on Lago Maggiore. This is a small island of 350 meters long and 100 meters wide on Lago Maggiore in northern Italy. Gabriella sent this card and says that she was born here. When it's snowing and the temperature is -25 or so, I can only look out the window and wonder what I did wrong to be born in Canada. I know, we got hockey and that makes up for it , right ? Gabriella your birthplace looks beautiful to me. Two very neat stamps from a 2004 multi-sheet of 4 , all showing shoes were used.

The last card in this update comes from Portugal even though it shows the Tibidabo tram in Barcelona , Spain. I understand the view from the top of the Tibidabo mountain is outstanding. An interesting stamp on this card- a round shape like a soccer ball. This 2010 stamp commemorating the last World Cup has a design depicting a leopard skin within the image of the ball.

That's it for this time. Like a recent update, I started this on Wednesday evening and am now just finishing up Thursday afternoon, so don't be misled by the date shown above. Thanks to Bruce, Gabriella and little Leonor for their cards.