Postcards for the weekend: City views

This weekend's theme of Postcards for the Weekend is 'City views' (at daylight).

A nice way to visit a city is to travel by train. To me railway stations in many cases are a gateway to a city, because you can enter the heart of the city directly. In contrary to highways, not to speak from parking problems in at least the Dutch main cities.



Eva sent me these two postcards of the Atocha Railway station in Madrid. A city I never have visited so far, even though my family is hispanophilic - my brother and sister-in-law even chose to live in the south of Spain many years ago and they are still living there, along with my niece and nephew who have been born there.



An other place I have never been to but which I should visit - at least this interesting architectured museum Guggenheim - is Bilbao, in the north of Spain:



From Spain to the south there is Morocco. I received this pretty postcard from Essaouira, a city at the West coast of the country:




Stamp on the envelope containing the Madrid postcards (thus sent from Morocco):



Stamp on the Bilbao postcard:



Stamp accompanying the sea gulls:




See more beautiful city view postcards on this weekend's Postcards for the Weekend, and follow the links mentioned.

In: from Morocco

I love birds and I love (living) fish. Eva made my day by sending this card, showing on the back a matching fish stamp, and in front an unusual view: of many birds (but it seems that the sea gulls prefer eatable fish).

The photo also shows part of the 500 years old walls of the city Essaouira. The name 'Essaouira' comes from the Tamazight word 'Tassort' which means (small) wall. The city's former name is 'Mogador'. Nowadays it is a UNESCO world heritage site.



Thank you very much, Eva!

Sunday Stamps: Birds

Sunday 2 October it is Sunday Stamps time again!
The theme is 'Birds', and I think our feathered friends always making a nice theme.

I'd like to show you the stamps on my recent 'chaincard', which has been traveling between the Netherlands, Canada, Thailand and Hong Kong (click to enlarge):



On top you can see my card before the sparrow flew out. And below you can see the influence of a journey over three continents. Apart from some postmark ink, the sparrow arrived rather well!



One of the other chaincard fellows will receive these stamps (I love the puffin and crow stamp!),



See more Birds stamps on and via Sunday Stamps.

Sunday stamps: Water birds

This time the Sunday Stamps' theme is 'Water Birds'.
As I love birds this is an other favourite subject of mine!

The first two stamps I love to share with you I've published before, be it not for Sunday Stamps. Thanks to FinnBadger I received these two wonderful sea birds: a Frigatebird and a Tufted Puffin. Both on an awesome envelope, made out of a calendar page showing birds by Charley Harper. The Flamingo of course is a water bird, too.
And - thank you FinnBadger for correcting me - I first thought the Frigatebird had been created by this famous artist, too, but it appears to have been designed by Tyler Lang, who has created many more animals illustrations, which at first sight remind me of Charley Harper's birds, but when you look close their style is so different!



The puffin has been designed by Robert Giusti.

And as puffins belong to my most favourite birds and Harper to one of my favourite artists (he has created a lot of bird pictures) and Tyler Lang's artwork I think inspiring, too, no need to say that FinnBadger's mail made my day :-)

In the Netherlands also various birds have been imaged on stamps.
These two stamp sheets have been issued in 2003 as a tribute to the Dutch wad in the Wadden area. The images have been designed by Eke van Mansvelt.



You can see the 'Scholekster'(Eurasian Oystercatcher), the 'Lepelaar' (Spoonbill), two kinds of Geese, the 'Grote Mantelmeeuw' (Great black-backed gull, I guess - there are a lot of kinds of sea gulls), the 'Wulp' (Eurasian curlew), some non-bird animals
and on the sheet itself the 'Visdief' (Common Tern), 'Plevieren' (Plovers).



The Wadden is a part of the north Sea, south of the so-called Wadden Islands. Since 2009 it is a UNESCO world heritage site, nevertheless the area is threatened, by pollution, by business plans etcetera, so I hope (and in fact expect) the area will continue to be protected.

By the way, the postage has increased a lot since 2003. In that year we had to pay € 0,39 for national mail and € 0.59 for international mail (all up to 20 grams). Anno 2016 it is € 0.73 for national mail and € 1.25 for international mail..

See more Sea Birds - and Charley Harper stamps! - at and via the links under this Sunday's Sunday Stamps blog!

Sunday stamps: Birds

The Sunday Stamps theme of the last day of November is 'Birds'.
The Dutch post has issued a serie of Dutch birds stamp sheets in 2011. Among them the Grutto, or Black-tailed godwit (see above), and the Koolmees, or Great tit (see below).



One of my most favourite birds picture is the illustration of two sea gulls by Sieb Posthuma.
He created these as part of the 20-stamps December stamp sheet of last year.
Every year an other illustrator or design bureau is asked to design the December stamps, and the new - 2014 - December stamps already have bene issued, created by other illustrators.

Sad to know that the famous children's book writer, illustrator - and designer of my all time favourite December stamps (an other of this sheet is the postman!) - has passed away last August.