Tag Archives: Waterfront

Stockholm

By ilyani | Published 18 June, 2009

Stockholm in Sweden is one of the capital cities in Europe that I fell in love at the first sight (I am talking about seeing the images on postcards, of course as I have not yet been Europe, which is sad -__-). This city particularly strikes me with alot of water of the Lake Mälaren and Baltic Sea all around it, I have mentioned this several times before that I have a thing on waterfront cities, and Stockholm is located on 14 small islands in the edge of the Scandanavian peninsula.

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Sent by Skrallan, 2006, via Another country tag.

Here it is what I am talking about! It does look like a floating city, doesn’t it?? :D And it’s so exciting that you have to cross many bridges to reach a place, yet the roadways don’t look very busy! (read: bridges in Malaysian cities are the most congested places! Yikes). And really, I love how well this city is structured, with awesome buildings, modern and old.

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Sent by MerJade, 2009.

View above is how you see from the top of the City Hall Tower. And picture below shows the Stockholm Palace, the official residence of the Swedish Monarch. There used to be a fortress in this site and they reconstructed it to be a palace in 1697-1760.

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Sent by MerJade, 2009

Here’s the City Hall and its tower! It was built in 1911-1923 and is home to the Municipal Council for the Stockholm city, and also the venue of the Nobel Prize banquet!

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Sent by MerJade, 2009.

Oh yeah suddenly I have been blessed with many beautiful postcards from Sweden, if you must know ;) and this is among my favorite – as it shows a city tram! I have come to learn that trams are among the earliest public transportation in Europe which is really appealing to me. This Stockholm old tram goes to Djurgården island with many museums, zoo, and amusement park.

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South Africa

By ilyani | Published 25 May, 2009

My few postcards from South Africa are rather random so I’m just making a general first entry for this country.

From Sandy. A breathtaking view of the Drakensberg Mountain Park.. which is the highest mountain range in South Africa rising to 3,482 metres. This park is listed among the UNESCO World Heritage Sites in this country.

From Chat_Noir. He went to Cape Town in 2006 and brough back these great postcards for us! This postcard of Nelson Mandela‘s cell rather gets my attention in a way that it’s related to someone really well-known, especially who has fought his life for a good cause. Mandela spent 19 of this 27 years of imprisonment in this cell number 5 in the Robben Island. And it’s definitely worth it, as he became the first democratically elected President of South Africa afterwards.

From Chat_Noir. Another lovely postcard showing the whole essence of Cape Town: 1) The Cape Point is the most southern tip of the African continent and the point where the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean meets. 2) Beach view with the Table Mountain in sight. 3) The Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens and 4) the V&A Waterfront.

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Cantabria

By ilyani | Published 19 May, 2009

Cantabria is a province in northern Spain, and its capital is Santander. Cantabria is the world’s richest region when it comes to archaeology, as it homes to many remaining date from as early as 40,000 to 10,000 years ago – which is called the Upper Paleolithic period. I would really love to get postcards about archaeology, but in the meantime, here are some non-archaeology postcards from Cantabria, which are not bad either :)

ES-1979 from Shwanee. I love views of waterfront cities like this, with boats and all, and open air dining places alongside the water (sea, lake, whatever).

From MarioGV. A lovely sight of old villages by the sea in San Vicete de la Barquera. San Vicente’s old town was declared to be of Cultural Interest because of its interesting collection of monuments,  remainings of the Santa María de los Ángeles church from the 13th and 16th centuries, as well as the Maza bridge. It does look amazing, a seaside village and at the same time snowy mountains at the background! I can’t remember if I have seen such places like this before.

From MarioGV. And the closeup of the mountains!! This view is toooo great to believe, don’t you think? I just thought, wow, is this picture real? :) I mean.. the mountains, I thought you could only see such when you go hundreds miles to some moutainous area, when you can see nothing at all but only snowy mountains around you.. do you get what I mean? But here, it just looks as if you can even get view of mountains like this at the back of your backyard! See the cattles?? Oh I want to move to this village!! :D Okay so these gorgeous mountains are Picos de Europa or the Peaks of Europe.. a range of mountains some 20km inland from northern coast of Spain. These mountains were the first sight of Europe for the ships arriving from America.

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