Postcard PT-257988 from Portugal shows a beach scene in the Algarve, the southernmost region of continental Portugal. Known for its sunny Mediterranean climate and its beach and golf resorts, it is the most popular tourist destination in Portugal in the summer. It has half a million regular residents, with visitors and seasonal residents adding to another million during the peak holiday season. The Algarve receives near 10 million visitors annually, including 7 millions from overseas.
Postcard US-4036245 from Colorado shows the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA), located in Colorado Springs, Colorado. According to Wikipedia, it is the youngest of the five United States service academies, with its first class graduated in 1959. Graduates of the Academy's four-year program receive a Bachelor of Science degree, and are commissioned as second lieutenants in the United States Air Force. The Academy is also one of the largest tourist attractions in Colorado, receiving close to one million visitors every year.
President Obama attended the Academy's 2016 graduation ceremony yesterday on June 2, 2016 as the keynote speaker. In his final commencement address of his presidency, Obama shared some of the lessons he learned in the White House as president and commander-in-chief, and warned the graduating cadets about isolationism.
The United States Air Force Thunderbirdsperformed during the graduation ceremony. However, one of its fighter jets crashed on its way back to the Peterson Air Force Base after the fly-over demonstration.
Postcard IE-100789 from Ireland shows a beach view of Youghal, a seaside resort town in County Cork, Ireland, on the estuary of the River Blackwater. It's a popular tourist destination.
In this St. Patrick's Day, the Brooklyn Bridge at New York-New York has turned green, where the three-day Celtic Feis festival are offering delicious Irish fare, specialty beverages, and live entertainment from March 17 to 19, 2016. Nine Fine Irishmen, an Irish bar adjacent to the bridge, was originally made in Ireland before shipped to Las Vegas and reassembled at the New York-New York site. The bar features nine draft beers including Guinness, Harp and Newcastle, and a large selection of Irish whiskey from the two most popular distilleries in Ireland.
As a captured audience inside the Terminal 2 at the SFO International Airport waiting for my return flight to Las Vegas, I found a rack full of "I left my heart in San Francisco" postcards. Outgoing postcard US-3373240 to Ukraine was one of those that I obligatorily purchased.
The card shows a section of Lombard Street in the Russian Hill neighborhood, a one-way block between Hyde Street and Leavenworth Street, known as the crookedest street in the world with eight sharp turns.
That section of Lombard Street used to be a straight, cobblestone street with a 27% grade which was too steep for most cars. The turns were built in 1922 so that people could drive up and down the hill, until the street was made one-way downhill in 1939. The street was paved with red bricks and about 250 steps were built on each side of the street to accommodate pedestrians.
Now, during the peak tourist season in summer, there are as many as 350 cars driving down the street each hour. However, it was not a popular tourist destination until the late 1950s. I drove down the street twice during my previous visit to San Francisco in 1999. This time, I took the Powell-Hyde cable car to the top of this block earlier today, and took the steps down to Leavenworth Street.
Postcard IE-78738 from Ireland shows a sunset view from the Cliffs of Moher or Aillte an Mhothair in Irish, located at the southwestern edge of the Burren region in County Clare, Ireland. According to Wikepedia, those cliffs rise 120 meters or 390 feet above the Atlantic Ocean at Hag's Head, and reach their maximum height of 214 meters or 702 feet just north of O'Brien's Tower, eight kilometers to the north. There is a round stone tower near the midpoint of the cliffs, built in 1835 by Sir Cornelius O'Brien, where visitors can see the Aran Islands in Galway Bay, the Maumturks and Twelve Pins mountain ranges to the north in County Galway, and Loop Head to the south. With almost one million visitors a year, it was one of the most popular tourist sites in Ireland.
A rainbow formed over Dublin in the evening yesterday as people in Ireland voted on a proposed constitutional amendment to legalize same-sex marriage. Final results indicated that 62% of voters and all but one district approved the amendment in a referendum Friday. It shows that support for marriage equality extended well beyond Ireland’s liberal urban centers and deep into its rural heartlands; and that a vote for same-sex marriage in Ireland is not a ‘No’ vote to Catholicism. Just as Prime Minister Enda Kenny proclaimed: “with today’s vote, we have disclosed who we are: a generous, compassionate, bold and joyful people.” Ireland became the first country to legalize same-sex marriage by popular vote in the world, joining 18 other countries (Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada, South Africa, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, Iceland, Argentina, Denmark, France, Brazil, Uruguay, New Zealand, Britain, Luxembourg, and Finland) where same-sex couples can marry nationwide.
Postcard NO-102992 from Norway shows North Cape (Nordkapp in Norwegian), located on the northern coast of the island of Magerøya in Northern Norway and shown as a red pin in the following map. It is often mistakenly regarded as the northernmost point of Europe.
However, the neighboring Knivskjellodden point, shown as a green pin on the map below, is 1,457 meters or 4,780 feet farther to the north, which is sometimes considered the northernmost point of the entire continent of Europe.
Nonetheless, both of above points are located on an island. Cape Nordkinn (Kinnarodden in Norwegian), located on the Nordkinn Peninsula and shown as a yellow pin on the map, is the northernmost point of mainland Europe.
Regardless, North Cape is a popular tourist attraction with a 307-meter or 1,007-foot high cliff where visitors can watch the midnight sun or the panoramic views of the Barents Sea, part of the Arctic Ocean, to the north on a large flat plateau. The midnight sun can be seen from May 14 to the July 31 during which the sun reaches its lowest point above the horizon from 12:14 to 12:24 a.m.
Postcard TR-195334 from Turkey shows multiple views of Antalya, a city on the Mediterranean coast of southwestern Turkey on the Asia side with a population of 964,886 in 2011. As Turkey's largest sea resort town, Antalya was the third most visited city, behind Paris and London, in the world in 2013 in terms of the number of international arrivals. Major attractions include Düden Waterfalls and Yivliminare Mosque, as shown on the card.
Postcard FR-420722 from France shows Moulin Rouge, meaning Red Mill in French, a cabaret co-founded by Charles Zidler and Joseph Oller in Paris, France in 1889.
Marked by the red windmill on its roof, Moulin Rouge is best known as the spiritual birthplace of the modern form of the can-can dance. According to Wikepedia, "originally introduced as a seductive dance by the courtesans who operated from the site, the can-can dance revue evolved into a form of entertainment of its own and led to the introduction of cabarets across Europe. Today, the Moulin Rouge is a tourist attraction, offering musical dance entertainment for visitors from around the world. The club's decor still contains much of the romance of fin de siècle France."
It inspired Moulin Rouge!, a 2001 musical film, that was nominated for eight and eventually won two Oscars at the 74th Academy Awards on March 24, 2002. A music video featuring 1974 "Lady Marmalade" that was used as part of a medley in the movie, was produced in March 2001 with Christina Aguilera, Lil' Kim, Mýa, and Pink performing. The video won the 2001 MTV Video Music Award for "Best Video of the Year" and "Best Video from a Film" and a 2002 Grammy Award in the category of "Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals". The video reached 100,977,923 views on Vevo/Youtube by the end of today.
In Las Vegas, there was the Moulin Rouge Hotel and Casino located in the West Las Vegas neighborhood where the African Americans were forced to live. It first opened on May 24, 1955, with multiple references to Paris: Eiffel Tower appeared on the sign at the entrance, and on the casino chips; a French Chef was the head of the largest restaurant in the casino; security guards were dressed in the uniform of the French Foreign Legion.
The hotel and casino was the first integrated hotel casino in the United States while other casinos on the Las Vegas Strip were still segregated and off ff limits to blacks unless they were the entertainers or labors. The Moulin Rouge Hotel and Casino closed in November, 1955. Its short but vibrant life fueled the civil-rights movement in Las Vegas. It was added to the United States National Register of Historic Places in 1992. The shuttered hotel suffered a series of fires between May 29, 2003 and May 6, 2009. The Las Vegas Historic Preservation Commission approved demolition of the remains of the buildings in June, 2010,
Postcard NZ-107618 from New Zealand shows a sunset view of Cape Reinga, the northwesternmost tip of the Aupouri Peninsula, at the northern end of the North Island of New Zealand. In native Māori culture, the cape is where the spirits of the dead leap into the underworld.
Cape Reinga is on the tentative list of UNESCO's World Heritage Site, waiting to receive formal recognition. The cape is already a favorite tourist attraction, receiving over 120,000 visitors per year and around 1,300 cars per day during peak season. However, similar to the Key West bouy, the cape is not the northernmost point of the North Island, and thus, of mainland New Zealand, contrary to the common belief. North Cape's Surville Cliffs, 30 kilometers or 18.6 miles east of Cape Reinga, are slightly further north.
Postcard TW-908889 from Taiwan offers an aerial view from the north of Tamsui District (淡水區) in New Taipei City, Taiwan. It is a sea-side district where the Tamsui River, whose name means "fresh water", flows west into the Taiwan Strait. As a natural harbor, Tamsui was a major fishing and trade port in history because of its proximity to mainland China.
Twenty six years ago, the Tamsui Line, a railroad branch line operated by the Taiwan Railway Administration (TRA) and connected Taipei and Tamsui, closed on July 15, 1988. The Taipei Metro Tamsui Line was later built along the route. Upon the completion of the Metro Line in 1997, Tamsui experienced a dramatic increase of tourist traffic. Tamsui is popular for viewing the sunset into the Taiwan Strait, for various activities on several riverside parks, and for shopping at open-air markets specializing in traditional handicrafts and street-vendor snacks. Visitors can also visit a fisherman's wharf, and take ferries traversing across and along the river.
Tamsui is home to three universities: Aletheia University, Tamkang University, and St. John's University. On the upper left of the postcard, Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport (TPE) can be seen in the background.
Following the First-Day-of-Issue dedication ceremony for the Harvey Milk Stamp at the White House in Washington, D.C. on May 22, 2014, City of San Francisco hosted a ceremony to celebrate the forever stamp at the City Hall on May 28, 2014.
The San Francisco event features a pictorial postmark with an outline of the state of California and the text “San Francisco, City Hall.” To obtain this pictorial postmark, send requests within 30 days of the event to the following address:
HARVEY MILK, SAN FRANCISCO CITY HALL Station, Box 7838, San Francisco, CA 94120-7838
The Palace of Fine Arts postcard, one of those postcards that I am going to send out for this special cancellation, shows the remaining structures left from the Panama Pacific Exposition in 1915. It is now the home of the Exploratorium. In addition to hosting art exhibitions, it is a popular tourist attraction as well as a favorite weddings photograph location. Photo by Andrew Mckinney.
Postcard TW-1123145 from Taiwan shows a colorful train running on the Neiwan Line (內灣線), a railway branch railway line in Hsinchu County, Taiwan. The line was constructed in 1950 and was fully open on September 11, 1951, with a length of 27.9 km and 14 stations from Hsinchu to Neiwan. It became a popular tourist attraction in the early
2000s.
Postcard TW-1051157 from Taiwan shows the Alishan Forest Railway (阿里山森林鐵路), a network of narrow-gauge (762 mm or 2.5 ft wide) railways originally constructed for logging in the Alisha mountain area in Chiayi County, Taiwan. Now it is a popular tourist attraction with unique Z-shaped switchbacks, many tunnels and wooden bridges.
