New postcards come almost everyday now here are some from the latest batch.
Here are some more postcards for your viewing pleasure.
This first one if from Germany. The sender says that at the Baltic Sea coast at some time during the year there is an invasion of millions of ladybugs and that the houses and streets are covered in them, that everything is red. That sounds like a great time and place to visit Germany.
This next one comes from Finland Northern Lights at the top and reindeer at the bottom.
This last one is from Warsaw, Poland. The sender tells me the legend of how Warsaw was named. In her words:
"this city is called the way it is because a long time ago a young fisherman lived here, His name was Wars and he fell in love with a mermaid called Sawa, who lived in the river which flows next to this city. Soon after they met they got married. Everybody call the town they lived in Warsaw (Warsawa) from their names."
I love learning things like this from postcards. So interesting.
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Tip Today - Pack a few snacks in your car for road trips even if you plan to stop for all your meals it is nice to have just in case.
Quote Today - ″A traveler without observation is a bird without wings.” - Moslih Eddin Saadi
Dreaming Of - San Antonio
I joined a Round Robin on Postcrossing for Moms from around the world to exchange postcards. I though it was interesting to see the different kinds of cards that Moms will send.
This first one comes form New Mexico, this is definitely one of those things I have always wanted to see the hot air balloon races.
On to flowers from Germany
What looks to be a beautiful beach but I know that way up in Cape Cod it is usually too cold to really enjoy it.
This is the one I enjoyed receiving the most simply because it is the one that I am least likely to visit in my life. I don't know exactly why I feel that way, maybe because I am not religious enough for it to be worth the risk.
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Tip Today - Just do it.
Quote Today - “There is no moment of delight in any pilgrimage like the beginning of it.” - Charles Dudley Warner
Dreaming Of - Just doing it.
This next batch of postcards comes from a Round Robin I did through postcrossing with the theme literary. All of the cards sent are supposed to represent a favorite author or book title.
This one comes from the UK and lists their favorite book as The Last Lighthouse Keeper by Alan Titchmarsh
This next one comes from Minnesota, she lists her favorite book as The Teahouse Fire by Ellis Avery,
And last but not least is this card of the lovely Audrey Hepburn is from Germany the sender says their favorite author is Truman Capote and connecting the dots in Breakfast At Tiffany's sent this card.
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Tip Today - Make sure you have your mail stopped or ask a neighbor to pick it up for you while you are out of town, an overflowing box is a sign to thieves that you are not at home.
Quote Today - “One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” - Henry Miller
Dreaming Of - spending a month in a cabin in Montana
I love vintage postcards and so I have received these cards over the last few months.
Someone sent this one to me through postcrossing. I love it! these flowers are Edelweiss.
This one is an older areal view of New Orleans.
This last one is my favorite of the vintage cards I have received, it shows, women and horse drawn carts on a beach and comes to me from The Netherlands.
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Tip Today - Take your own pictures and have them turned into postcards after you come home. Friends and family will love the personal touch more than having a store bought card.
Quote Today - “One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” - Henry Miller
Dreaming Of - Going to Ireland, I have no idea when that will happen.
We are getting out early this morning. We are off to my family reunion, This is our route so hopefully we will make it there early enough in the day to still visit and have a good time.
View Directions to Slade, KY in a larger map
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Tip Today - Always carry a map, don't depend on you GPS to work halfway through your trip, by then you are lost.
Quote Today -
Dreaming Of - cooler days.
Here are some postcards that came to me from different places within our own country, just showing me how many places there are right here in my own backyard so to speak that I have yet to explore.
This one a friend of mine picked up at Fort Sumter in South Carolina.
This next one comes from the same friend, I think the location is obvious.
This one came just the other day from Texas. I am still excited to go to San Antonia which we still have planned for the end of August.
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Tip Today - When leaving a cat in the house for a few days alone when you will be out of town, Fill all your sinks and tub with water so the kitty has plenty to drink while you are away.
Quote Today - “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” - Mark Twain
Dreaming Of - Getting packed and getting out of here
Postcards seem to be all I have going on in the travel department right now. Which isn't entirely true but I hate to discus what my travel plans are because they have been changing so much. I guess there is one trip I know for sure I will be taking and that is to go to my family reunion over the second weekend in August. So, I will begin sharing that with you here.
Ok here is was fascinates me about these three post cards. Look at the similarities between the buildings. You can obviously see that these three different cultures have some of the same influences.
This first one is from Russia and the sender informs me that the building is a church and is very typical of the Russian North.
This next one is a monastery in China and was a favorite place of the ancient emperor as a summer resort.
The last one comes from Korea. Unfortunately I can not tell you what this building is as the sender did not include that information and I do not read Korean but it is beautiful. If I had to guess I would say it is a temple of some kind. Making all of these buildings religious in some way.
I am fascinated by everything these buildings have in common. Can you even imagine what else they might have in common if you could tour them all?
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Tip Today - Do not pack your expensive jewelery or items of great value if you don't absolutely have to, they are safer at home.
Quote Today - “People travel to faraway places to watch, in fascination, the kind of people they ignore at home.” - Dagobert D. Runes
Dreaming Of - The details of upcoming giveaways.
This first card came to me from Germany. The title of the artwork on the card is Where Goes The Music and was painted by Michael Ferner. These guys are fuzzy at first I thought it was just their clothes but then I realized everything was fuzzy.
This card is from Hungary and is the first card I have ever received from that country. It is an illustration from a very famous Hungarian illustrator called Reich Karoly. I would love to read one of his storybooks some day.
Some handmade cards just aren't very good, the people sending them try but they just don't fit together very well at all. This one however is great, there are pictures of the city, art and pictures of real live people they look like they are clipped from a newspaper and that is great, I love seeing the real people.
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Tip Today - Bring a glue stick w/ you while traveling so you can paste all tix stubs, mementos, etc. into your journal. - this tip from @travelmile
Quote Today - “He who does not travel does not know the value of men.” - Moorish proverb
Dreaming Of - Our upcoming trip to San Antonio and not coming home afterward.
Here is the great thing about these first two. I received them both on the same day from two different people with two different postcrossing ID's and as you can see they are both from Suomi, Finland. How weird is that? It's never happened to me before but I have to say that although the system of how address' are picked for you over at postcrossing is supposed to be random I get a LOT of address' in Finland and I get a LOT of postcards from Finland. Now I like Finland as much as the next guy (you do like Finland, don't you?) but unless the amount of users from Finland way out number that from the rest of the world there is something up with the randomness of the system. No matter, I still love the postcrossing project.
Both cards make it look like a nice place to visit. I don't really love the cards where they take two or three perfectly nice pictures and put them next to each other or on top of each other. Like the red house with the stream in the second postcard, that is a beautiful picture that could carry a card on it's own but they have thrown form flowers on top of it and a weird boarder around it and that is not attractive.
This one came to me from China actually from Susie in Shanghai to be more specific. It looks like such beautiful country. So much of it looks completely untouched or at least not paved over like so much of America and other places for that matter. China is definitely on my list of places to visit.
This one I have misplaced and so can't give you any information on it but it is cool looking and a little weird.
Oh Italy how I long to visit your...your...your everything! I copied this from the official orta website :
The area around Lake Orta has long been a favorite tourists, thanks to the quiet beauty of the landscape, its fascinating history and its wealth of artistic treasures - principally Romanesque and Baroque architecture.
Lake Orta lies to the west of Lake Maggiore, in the northern Italy. It is a minor star in the costellation of the subalpine lakes, but all the fascination and the history of the larger lakes seem to be concentrated in this short space.
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Tip Today - FYI In Europe they don' usually give away free water at restaurants and a lot of the time they drink sparkling water not regular water.
Quote Today - “Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.” - Jack Kerouac
Dreaming Of - Taking the Little Guy somewhere exotic not just to Grandma's house
I am convinced that one of the best ways to experience any place that I visit is to stop by a neighborhood park. Even though I was born and raised in Fort Myers, Florida the area is constantly changing and my 3 years in New Orleans have been long enough for me to find new places to visit when I come back to Florida to visit family. One of the new things I noticed on this visit is a new park on Veronica Shoemaker Blvd, I believe the address was 3600.
The park was hot on the day we visited and there isn't a lot of shade for the playground area but there are three covered pavilions that are available on a first come first served basis. Which is where I parked my bag while the little guy was playing.
Adjacent to the two playgrounds, each recommended for different age groups, there is a section with exercise equipment. This is not one of those old circuits with a wooden bench and three poles of varying heights sticking out of the ground, this new and improved circuit course has a manual treadmill, skier and row type machines. I was really impressed with how smoothing everything ran considering it is out in the elements and Florida is a pretty harsh environment. I picture this park as the perfect place to meet with a group of parent friends a few times per week. The little ones could play as a few parents watched and the other parents could run through the circuits nearby then switch off, I wish New Orleans had a park like this one, I would definitely exercise more often.
We weren't out every long since it was a really hot day, but while we were at this park there was a group of people in the largest pavilion, they seemed to be having a debate, it was organized and I wondered if it was some type of group therapy session. It was interesting hearing little bits of conversation about why people dumped old boyfriends and what someone would do with a million dollars. A few minutes before we decided to pack it up for the day a couple of people on their lunch break sat down at a table with their sandwiches, which looked really good by the way, they were friendly and said 'hi' to my son as we walked by. These are the types of people you see at neighborhood parks, real local people enjoying the area, just like you.
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Tip Today - Always leave a flashlight in your car, you never know when you are going to need it, flat tire at night anyone? Show of hands.
Dreaming Of - A souvenir giveaway series from all the places I visit.
There are plenty of sites out there on the Internet that collect weird and interesting signs from around the world which I find lots of fun to look at so here I am going to share one with you that I ran into today while at the new trailhead park on Veronica Shoemaker Blvd in Fort Myers.
In addition to the lot of postcards I receive from international destinations I also receive a few from right here in the United States of America. Each one reminds me time and again how many wonderful things we have right here in our own country. These are a few of those cards.
One of the great things about traveling is seeing all the different things, experiencing new and different things or the opportunity to rediscover those little things that you love. (one of the bad things is dailup internet connection, notice the lack of pictures?).
In Louisiana we have thunderstorms but they are just not as sweeping as the ones here in Florida. It seems with the changes in the weather that there are fewer and fewer of these storms both in Louisiana and in Florida. Being here on the "farm" in Florida you really get a sense of the power behind the storms that I think is lost in the buildings of the big city.
Leave me a comment telling me something you have enjoyed discovering or rediscovering while on vacation.
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Tip Today - Never pack a bottle filling with liquid loose in your checked bag. Always wrap it in a plastic bag or ziplock bag. you never know when there will be a leak (or worse, a break) and you don't want shampoo all over your clothes.
Dreaming Of - high speed internet.
Recently I joined a weird/odd/strange round robin for postcards on postcrossing and I finally received all the cards from all the other participants and wanted to share them with you here.
This next one comes to me from Dallas, Texas. There are reasons why I don't see myself ever living in Texas and although I don't have a clue what this postcard means I think this might be one of the reasons.
This card comes to me from Russia and although I don't think it is as weird as the other two it is definitely cute. The postcrosser who sent it to me informs me that the statement on the front translates to "Dreaming is not Harmful"This is something I did a while ago back before I was really posting on this blog regularly. Now that I am taking it more seriously I want to bring it back to the front for all of you to enjoy.
This is a video where I explain how to build a separate bedroom for your baby or child when staying in a hotel room
Click Here to View
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Tip Today - When making this baby bedroom near a door place a towel at the bottom of the door to keep the light from disturbing the baby.
Quote Today -“The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.” - G. K. Chesterton
Dreaming Of - taking a nap
When my son started sitting in a high chair I knew I had a problem, see we live in the Faubourg Marigny. Faubourg Marigny is the neighborhood just outside the French Quarter to the East. That means we live in an area where there are not a lot of kids which further means the restaurants in our area that do allow children (and there are actually a few) do not always provide high chairs. This led to me having to find an easy, light and safe alternative to the sturdy though sometimes dirty wooden high chair provided by so many restaurants.
What I found was this great little booster seat made by Regalo. The seat straps to pretty much any regular chair. When straped down it is very secure. I have never had any problem with it slipping in all the places I have been. This seat folds up easily and comes with it's own little carrying case (really convienient) and comes it at just 3 pounds making it great for walking around and an ea
sy addition to a picnic or other activity. Plus the little guy can move it around himself if we are out at a park. I love when he can help out. It is totally washable and has a built in cup holder. This seat has allowed us to go out to many places we simply wold not have been able to go without it. I always add it to the car for road trips. It's folds up so small it isn't any trouble to fit it in and it is hands down one of the biggest assets on road trips for restaurants and park visits.
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Tip Today - When flying aerosol insecticides - Hazardous aerosols, such as insecticides, cannot be transported in either your carry-on or checked luggage. Better to purchase your bug spray at yur destination or pack those new bug wipes and patches for outdoor adventures.
Quote Today - “A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles.” - Tim Cahill
Dreaming Of - Getting my husband to agree to a long road trip.
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