Portuguese sweets

Postcard ID: PT-293697
Country: Portugal

Here are sweets from Portugal. Yummy!

I want to eat all of them! Omnomnom :)

Also here are 2 stamps from 2 series - Native Birds (2002) and Traditional Food (2012):

Coimbra, Portugal

Postcard ID: PT-381854
Country: Portugal

Yeah, here is more card from beautiful Portugal. I don't know why, but I love this country more and more and would like to visit it in the next couple of years :)

This card is shows Coimbra, a city and a municipality in Portugal.

The third-largest urban centre in Portugal (after the much larger cities of Lisbon and Porto), it is the largest city of the district of Coimbra, the Centro region and the Baixo Mondego subregion. About 460,000 people live in the Região de Coimbra, comprising 19 municipalities and extending into an area 4,336 square kilometres (1,674 sq mi). Although it served as the nation's capital in the High Middle Ages, it is better known for the University of Coimbra, one of the oldest in Europe and the oldest academic institution in the Portuguese-speaking world.

The historical University buildings were classified as World Heritage by UNESCO in 2013: "Coimbra offers an outstanding example of an integrated university city with a specific urban typology as well as its own ceremonial and cultural traditions that have been kept alive through the ages."

Post about Coimbra university is here.

In conclusion, here is a Portuguese stamp:

Madeira - Typical Houses, Portugal

Postcard ID: PT-298633
Country: Portugal

The sender said that these are the typical houses in Madeira - would like I live in one of them :)

Madeira is a Portuguese archipelago located in the north Atlantic Ocean, just under 400 kilometres north of Tenerife, Canary Islands. The archipelago is one of the two Autonomous regions of Portugal (the other being the Azores, located to the northwest), and includes the islands of Madeira, Porto Santo, and the Desertas, administered together with the separate archipelago of the Savage Islands. It is an outermost region of the European Union.

Madeira was claimed by Portuguese sailors in the service of Infante D. Henrique (Henry the Navigator) in 1419, and settled after 1420. The archipelago is considered to be the first territorial discovery of the exploratory period of the Portuguese Age of Discovery.

Today, it is a popular year-round resort, being visited every year by about one million tourists, noted for its Madeira wine, flowers, landscapes and embroidery artisans, as well as for its annual New Year celebrations that feature the largest fireworks show in the world, as officially recognised by Guinness World Records in 2006. The main harbour in Funchal is the leading Portuguese port in cruise liner dockings, being an important stopover for commercial and trans-Atlantic passenger cruises between Europe, the Caribbean and North Africa.

Here is a Portuguese stamp:

Sardines from Portugal

Postcard ID: PT-376034
Country: Portugal

It's so nice to describe summer card in the autumn evening :) me and my husband are fans of  grilled fish.

Sardines are a common type of fish consumed by humans, as sardines are rich in nutrients. They are commonly served in cans, but fresh sardines are often grilled, pickled or smoked.

Sardines, or pilchards, are several types of small, oily fish related to herrings, family Clupeidae. The term sardine was first used in English during the early 15th century, and may come from the Mediterranean island of Sardinia, around which sardines were once abundant.

Sardines are commercially fished for a variety of uses: for bait; for immediate consumption; for canning, drying, salting, or smoking; and for reduction into fish meal or oil. The chief use of sardines is for human consumption, but fish meal is used as animal feed, while sardine oil has many uses, including the manufacture of paint, varnish and linoleum.

Here is a stamp from the card:

Door mail boxes, Portugal

Postcard ID: PT-363613
Country: Portugal

This is a real 'post' theme! Oh, would like to have a mail box like anyone from these. But now I only have standard mailbox on the first floor of our multi-storey building. Once, I'll have an own house... :)

By the way, this card also contains a poem (in Portuguese and English!):

This is not my love, 

It's another one much smaller, 

That I summoned from Oporto 

In the wings of a little bird

(c)Eugenio de Andrade

As usual Portuguese postcard has interesting stamps:

Nymphaea alba

This is one more postcard from my friend Joao :)

When I was younger we had at home a book with horoscope for each sign of the zodiac. My sister believe in this, but I'm not really now. However in the childhood I liked to read about colours for my sign, my planet patron an so on. There I knew that flower for my sign is water lily.

Now I don't read horoscopes, but still like these flowers :)

This card also contains really wonderful special edition stamp! To be honest, I even don't know what is better: postcard or stamp? They both are awesome!

Portimao, Portugal

Postcard ID: PT-308128
Country: Portugal

Portimão is a Portuguese town located in the District of Faro in the Algarve region on the southern coast of Portugal. It was formerly known as Vila Nova de Portimão. In 1924, it was incorporated as a cidade and became known merely as Portimão. The town has 55,614 inhabitants and the Portimão Municipality has 50,454 (as of 2009; INE). The two most populous towns in the Algarve are Portimão and Faro.

From touristic point of view Portimao is famous for its fresh fish restaurants, grilled sardines being the most famous dish.

Here is a funny Portuguese stamp:

Coimbra University

This interesting and beautiful card is sent to me by my friend Joao. Hey, friend, you send me more Portuguese cards than I receive via official postcrossing site, huh :)

The University of Coimbra is a Portuguese public university in Coimbra, Portugal. Established in 1290, it is one of the oldest universities in continuous operation in the world, the oldest university of Portugal, and one of its largest higher education and research institutions. It is organized into eight different faculties according to a wide range of fields, granting academic bachelor's, master's and doctorate degrees in arts, engineerings, humanities, mathematics, natural sciences, social sciences, sports and technologies. It is a founding member of the Coimbra Group, a group of leading European research universities, whose inaugural meeting it hosted. The University of Coimbra has approximately 20,000 students, and hosts one of the largest communities of international students in Portugal, being the most cosmopolitan Portuguese university.

On June 22, 2013, UNESCO added the university to its World Heritage List

As usual Joao sticked nice stamps for me. Thanks again! I really appreciated all your efforts!

Cream cake

Hurray! My collection of sweets has new item now :)

My apologies if you see this message in evening or night. It looks so delicious.

This card also sent to me by Joao. He said that these are the best cupcakes in the whole world. And I believe him.

The original recipe is a secret well kept!

Joao share with me that these cakes are delicious with a touch of cinnamon and a hot cup of coffee. Mmm, yammy! 

This card also contains wonderful stamps:

Roses

These beautiful roses was sent to me by my friends on this site Joao. Thanks a lot for your cards and friendship!

Description from the backside of the card:

Rosa 'Lawrence Johnston' and Rosa 'Cupid', a Hybrid tea, by Graham Stuart Thomas. First published ain Climbing roses  old and new (1965)

Graham Stuart Thomas was an English horticulturalist and garden designer, best known for his work with garden roses, his restoration and stewardship of over 100 National Trust gardens and for writing 19 books on gardening, many of which remain classics today.

In his obituary in the LA Times, Clair Martin, rose curator of Huntington Botanical Gardens said: "Thomas set about preserving the heritage of old roses when many of them were on the verge of extinction".

I like flowers, I like these roses, I like this card! :)

Of course, this card has absolutely amazing stamp!

Bailarico by Mario Eloy

Postcard ID: PT-352261
Country: Portugal

This card helps me to know more about Portuguese painters. Here is a description from the backside of the card:

"The figures are executed schematically and the houses reveal cubist influences and suggest an anthropomorphic dimension. The space is thereby transformed into a projection of the unconscious world of the subject"

Mário Eloy was a Portuguese expressionist painter.

Eloy was born in Lisbon. His style shows the influence of painters like van Gogh, Picasso and, mostly, from the German expressionist painting, that he admired during his staying in Germany, from 1927 to 1932, especially Carl Hofer.

After returning to Portugal, he become the best representative from expressionism in the Portuguese painting. Some of his latter works, like "Enterro" (c. 1940), in his references, seems to anticipate the surrealism painting in Portugal.

He had to leave painting due to a serious mental disease, in 1944, and he spent the rest of his life in a mental institution at Rio de Mouro, where he died.

Here is a Portuguese stamp: