Some odds and ends from last August...

 795 - Polina in Russia (RU-1853454) sent me this lovely photo of a ballet dancer.  And this stamp is super.

797 - This is a Barbed Agama or Bearded Dragon (Pogona vitticeps) from 'Frightener' in Belarus (BY-978739)

798 - My friends Carol and Rob sent this card of Deception Falls on the scenic Stevens Pass Highjway over the Cascades in Washington State. In the early days of their marriage they used to go picnicing along this river with Rob's brother and his family.

800 - Rita has sent me postcards of Danish UNESCO World Heritage Sites including this one - Roskilde Cathedral on the island of Zealand.  Built in the 12th and 13th centuries, this was Scandinavia's first Gothic cathedral to be built of brick and it encouraged the spread of this style throughout northern Europe. It has been the mausoleum of the Danish royal family since the 15th century. Porches and side chapels were added up to the end of the 19th century. Thus it provides a clear overview of the development of European religious architecture.

The Europa stamp theme for this year is postal vehicles.

804 - Damien in France sends me lots of maps of the different Departments.

811 - Audrey Hepburn is my ideal but this card of Brigitte Bardot from Didier (FR-308280) was just as welcome!

813 - My friend Eva had a holiday in The Azores and was kind enough to send me a card of these old vineyards on Pico Island - a UNESCO WHS. 

The 987-ha site on the volcanic island of Pico, the second largest in the Azores archipelago, consists of a remarkable pattern of spaced-out, long linear walls running inland from, and parallel to, the rocky shore. The walls were built to protect the thousands of small, contiguous, rectangular plots (currais) from wind and seawater. Evidence of this viniculture, whose origins date back to the 15th century, is manifest in the extraordinary assembly of the fields, in houses and early 19th-century manor houses, in wine-cellars, churches and ports. The extraordinarily beautiful man-made landscape of the site is the best remaining area of a once much more widespread practice.