The Art of Toy Story: 100 Collectible Postcards

I bought this one to complete my Pixar postcards collection. The Art of Toy Story: 100 Collectible Postcards, they also came in the cute little box. It consists of concept arts, storyboards and sketches etc from the series of Toy Story. The reverse side of each postcard informs about the artist and the year the art was created.

The Art of Pixar: 100 Collectible Postcards

I adore Pixar movies and i finally got these postcards yay!!. There are 100 high quality postcards and came in a cute little box. Each postcards is different and consist of concept arts, storyboards and film images from Pixar movies. I LOVE them all!! :-)

Postmark Paris: A Little Album of Memories

I have just finished reading a children book recently. Postmark Paris: A Little Album of Memories, written by Leslie Jonath. This book tells stories about the author´s experiences when she moved to Paris at the age of 10 and how she started to collect stamps. The most interesting thing about this book is that half of the book contains pictures of beautiful stamps. The author used the matching stamps to illustrate her stories.


The book not only tells about stamps but also tells about her adventures during her stay in a new country for one year, places she visited, how she adjusted the language, school and making friends. It such a wonderful book and i hope that i can find the same stamps that are shown in the book :-). 

Postcard from Vatican

The Vatican City (Holy See) is the smallest independent state in the world that have their own post office and postmark. So while i was there, i took the opportunity to send postcards to my parents in Indonesia and of course to myself :-). Since i also collect stamps, i bought myself some Vatican Stamps. 

The Vatican Post Offices

Hey, I got the postcard a few days ago and it was postmarked 11-11-11 :-).

11-11-11 postmark

The Vatican City Stamps

Italy: A treat from hubby (Part 2)

Day 3

From the moment i woke up i was so excited to finally be going to Pompeii. For many years i knew about this place and always tried to imagine what it would be like to see it with my own eyes, now i was on the way there!.

Mount Vesuvius as background

It took us 3 hours to get to Pompeii from Rome. We arrived at the hotel just before lunch time. Without us knowing the hotel was just only less than 10 minutes walking to the Pompeii ruins :D. We paid €11 each for the ticket and it was worth it. Prepare for a long walk so better use a good shoes and bring extra water :-). There is big a café inside the grounds.

Porta Marina and the city walls

Pompeii is a city near Naples. according to Wikipedia, Pompeii was destroyed and completely buried during a long catastrophic eruption of the volcano Mount Vesuvius in the year 79 AD. The eruption buried Pompeii under ash and rock. It was rediscovered in the 16th century, but the exploration did not begin until 1748.

Road in Pompeii

Thermopolium of Vetutius Placidus

One of the beds in the brothel

Garden of the Fugitive

Temple of Apollo

Day 4

Today is Sunday. We hit the road as soon as we finished breakfast and were again lucky with the weather. From Pompeii to Pisa took around 6 hours driving and it was a nice drive through the country side with views of many vineyards along the way. We arrived at the hotel early evening. After freshening up we decided to have a look around. It took us 25 minutes walking to Pisa tower.  

Day 5

Ready to climb the Pisa tower!. We bought the tickets online for €17 each from this website in advance. Actually it is cheaper to buy the ticket on site €15, but we prepaid to guarantee a time slot otherwise it could be a long wait. The visit lasts about 30 minutes.

The spiral staircase to the tower has about 300 steps and it includes narrow and exposes passageways. It was a very strange experience to climb. Even though you are physically climbing upwards it appears that your going downwards, whilst on the other side the steps are actually pointing downwards slightly and that makes it very heavy climbing (this is only adjacent to the lean). On the other two parts of the steps it appears normal except you are leaning to the right or left. Overall its a great experience and worth a visit.

Slippery Steps

On the top of the Pisa Tower

Narrow passageway

We continued driving to Rome at lunch time. This time we took a route via Florence so we could visit and at least see Ponte Vecchico or the old bridge. Unlike all other bridges in Florence, Ponte Vecchico is the only bridge that survived World war II. It was hard to find parking there, so hubby had to park illegally so i could run and took a picture of the bridge from a distance.

Ponte Vecchico

We arrived in Rome in the evening and back to Norway early in the morning. 

     

Italy: A treat from hubby (Part 1)

A trip to Italy 2 weeks ago was a treated from hubby after left me home alone for almost 3 weeks, i would love to go back again. It is such a beautiful country with so many places and things to see. 5 days just wasn't enough!. 

The Piazza di San Pietro

Day 1 

We spent walking around Rome and The Vatican City. It has always been a dream of mine to visit the Vatican and attend a sunday mass with the Pope standing in front of me :p. Half of my dream has now come true, i did visit the Vatican but did not attend the mass. Maybe next time :-).

We stayed in the hotel just a few minutes away by bus from The Vatican City, after we checked in we went there straight away. It was 4 PM when we got there and we were too late to get tickets to the museum. Instead we went inside St. Peter´s Basilica, luckily the queue was not so big at that time. To get inside you had to pass a security check and you have to be dressed properly, ie no short skirt or tank tops and men are required to wear long trouser. From the moment i stepped inside i was never failed to be amazed, everything was SO beautiful!!.

Inside St. Peter´s Basilica

Michelangelo's Pietà

Day 2

Our first target for the day was to visit the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel. We were lucky again for not having to wait so long to get in. We paid €12 each for the ticket and it was totally worth it. The ticket is valid for both Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel. Everything in the museum is AMAZING, the art work, the sculptures, the architecture, the paintings, EVERYTHING!. Amongst everything that i saw, the ceiling was my favorite.

The ceiling inside the museum

The spiral exit

And its not yet finished. I got a shiver down to my spine as soon as i entered the Sistine Chapel. Words can not describe the feeling when i saw Michelangelo´s masterpiece: The Creation of Adam and The Last Judgment for the first time. Unfortunately, pictures are not allowed to be taken there but you can see the virtual tour of Sistine Chapel here. I could just stay there for hours if we didn't have any other places to visit.

Afterwards we took a bus from Vatican City to Rome. Even though we had limited time and my feet were aching, we managed to see few other attractions in Rome. 

Arch of Constantine

Inside the Colosseum

Colosseum in the evening

Trevi Fountain

The Spanish Steps

National Monument of Victor Emmanuel II

Pantheon

Postage Stamp: how i heart them now

I didn´t really start collecting postage stamps until recently. When i was a kid i´d like to tear the envelopes every time my parents got a letter. Unfortunately i never put all the stamps i got in the same place so i think they are all gone now :-(. Anyway, few months ago i was at flea market in Drammen and spotted a stamp album. I was SO excited when i looked at it, it´s a 16 page album and full, i mean FULL with old stamps :D. I feel like i found treasure hehe especially when its only 50 kroner. Since then i started to collect them.


Of course if anybody has any stamps they were thinking of throwing away, or just not saving any longer. Please think about me as i would be very grateful to receive them ;-).

Why i love to collect postcards?

I have been collecting things for many years now. I collect books, bookmarks, postcards and stamps. For me it´s a fun hobby and inexpensive :-D.  For now i just want to share why i love to collect postcards :-).


I started to collect postcards when i was in high school. I collect few different type of postcards but i am more interested in postcards of tourist attractions (landscape or historical building) that have a name of a place or country on it. I never thought that i would have the possibility to travel to other countries, so i always asked people i knew that were traveling to bring me postcards back so i could see what the places looked like and imagined i was there.

Now i have traveled to a few different places and collect my own postcards and have the fortune to see many places for real. The majority and earlier part of my collection are back in indonesia but i will continue to collect many more. Since i have been traveling i also collect fridge magnets and beer coasters (sometimes i took beer coaster from cafe or pub without permission :D)

Postcards

Beer Coasters

One of my fav. fridge magnets

Even though hubby thinks it´s junk he always brings me a postcard or fridge magnet every time he travels to new country with work :p.