World on my postcards

Le Mans (pronounced: [lə mɑ̃]) is a city in France, on the Sarthe River. Traditionally the capital of the province of Maine, it is now the capital of the Sarthe department and the seat of the Roman Catholic diocese of Le Mans.Since 1923, the city has hosted the internationally famous 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance sports car race.

The Bories village, a very unique village, is composed of seven groupings of huts, each having a very precise function. You will find houses, stables, sheepfolds, barns, grain lofts, silkworm factories and bakehouses, vat houses and tanning mills, henhouses, pig sties and goat shelters. The existence of this village shows that, outside of just a sporadic use of a borie, as a temporary dwilling, for example, or for agricultural purposes, there was a whole social and economic system built around and based on these dwellings of former times.

The Emerald Lakes fill explosion craters near the summit of Mt Tongariro. Their brilliant colours are partly caused by dissolved minerals, washed down from the thermal area of nearby Red Crater.

  The Cote d'Or department occupies the north-eastern part of Burgundy, in central-eastern France. The capital of Cote d'Or (and of the Burgundy region) is the impressive town of Dijon.

Borscht is a sour soup popular in several Eastern European cuisines, including Ukrainian, Russian, Polish, Belarusian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Romanian, and Ashkenazi Jewish cuisines.

 Guishan Island or Steep Island or Turtle Island, also known as Kueishan Island, is an island in the Pacific Ocean currently administered under Toucheng Township, Yilan County, Taiwan and located 9.1 km east of port of Gengfang Fishery Harbor.

  Pulteney Bridge, together with the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, is one of the world's most beautiful bridges. Like the Ponte Vecchio it is one of a handful of historic bridges in the world with shops built into it.  

  Aberystwyth is a University town with some seven thousand students, ensuring it a vibrant throughout the year and not just during summertime. Incidentally, there are now ‘only’ fifty pubs left in Aberystwyth!

  Aberystwyth is the principal holiday resort and administrative centre of the west coast of Wales. It is also home to the University of Wales Aberystwyth and the National Library. The town is nestled between three hills and two beaches, and hosts some castle ruins, a pier and a harbour. The surrounding hills hold the visible remains of a iron age fort and also a monument to Wellington and once climbed offer stunning views of Cardigan Bay.

Kakigōri (かき氷?) is a Japanese shaved ice dessert flavored with syrup and a sweetener, often condensed milk. Popular flavors include strawberry, cherry, lemon, green tea, grape, melon, "Blue Hawaii," sweet plum, and colorless syrup. Some shops provide colorful varieties by using two or more different syrups. To sweeten kakigōri, condensed or evaporated milk is often poured on top of it. It is similar to a snow cone, but with some notable differences: it has a much smoother fluffier ice consistency, much like fresh fallen snow, and a spoon is almost always used to eat it. The traditional way of making kakigōri uses a hand cranked machine to spin a block of ice over an ice shaving blade. Even though electric ice shavers are most often used, street vendors can still be seen hand-shaving ice blocks in the summer.

  The southeastern face of Mount Rushmore in South Dakota’s Black Hills National Forest is the site of four gigantic carved sculptures depicting the faces of U.S. Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. Led by the sculptor Gutzon Borglum, work on the project began in 1927 and was finally completed in 1941. Over that time period, some 400 workers erected the sculpture under dangerous conditions, removing a total of 450,000 tons of rock in order to create the enormous carved heads, each of which reached a height of 60 feet (18 meters).

 Tallinn, Estonia’s capital on the Baltic Sea, is the country’s cultural hub. It retains its walled, cobblestoned Old Town, home to cafes and shops, as well as Kiek in de Kök, a 15th-century defensive tower.

Following the creation of the Brazilian republic in 1889, which separated church and state, fear began to grow amongst Catholics that the nation was headed toward a precipice. After World War I, followers felt they needed a symbol to counteract what they saw as increasing "godlessness" throughout the country. In 1920, they selected engineer Heitor da Silva Costa’s design of a statue of Christ to be situated atop Mount Corcovado overlooking the city.