My parents sent it to my grandparents on 10 August 2009. I really do like this card a lot, especially how the pictures are on a background of flowers. It kinda makes the color "pop". To me, the colors just scream Summer.
I don't know overly much about Venice, especially since I wasn't on the trip with them to learn all about it. My dad would invariably get a Michelin travel guide on whatever area we would be traveling too, just like I would invariably read the first few chapters in it. The ones that give an overview of the area's history, geography and stuff like that. That's me, always reading something. Right now I'm reading a prehistoric novel, series actually. Which has absolutely nothing to do with postcards, but I'm also kinda random like that.
Anyway, for lack of a Michelin guide, I consulted the next best thing: the all-knowing Wikipedia (too bad I didn't find out about that until my last year of college, would've been so handy for the 12,345,678 reports on all manner of subjects during the previous 14 years of school).
Venice is named for the people who inhabited the region around the 10th century BC, the Veneti. Apparently, Venice is not what I thought to be a city with some canals in it (kinda like Bruges in Belgium if anyone's ever been there). It's actually a group of around 120 small islands that are connected with bridges and have those canals separating them. The whole city is listed as UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The city used to be the capital of the Republic of Venice from the late 7th century until 1797 (more than a millenium!) but lost its independence when they were conquered by Napoleon Bonaparte. At that point they kind of got tossed around between Austria and the Kingdom of Italy a few times until they finally stayed a part of Italy.
I can see where the tourism comes from, the city looks beautiful from the few pictures on the card! Maybe one day I'll be lucky enough to be able to visit there as well. I do still treasure the painted mask my mom brought back for me as a souvenir, and it's proudly displayed on my living room wall along with our German cuckoo clock, Belgian non-working clock (but it's shaped like the country so I like the way it looks), some pictures from Texas and some Korean wire. Just to keep things international I guess...
But back to the actual card. The stamp on it was kind of nice:
The stamp belongs to the "Made in Italy" series and there's around 3.5 million printed. It has the Sant' Agatha Bolognese mark, which is the bull on the black background. To my knowledge (which is very limited when it comes to stamps), this stamp was released in 2007. Pin It
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