Postcards

I used to be a huge postcard person but now I haven't sent them in quite a few years. I just take a photo with my phone, write a little message, and send it, but that is a much different type of message than a postcard. I remember very well sitting in cafes, parks, or hotel rooms writing postcards. From Europe, they seemed to get home in a week to 10 days. When I was in Peace Corps in Ecuador, they would take anywhere from two weeks to 6 months. A few never got home! A letter I sent once took a year--it arrived in Seattle having apparently spent several months in El Salvador.

International mail can be very slow. I mailed some postcards from Scotland earlier this year and they took over 2 months to arrive.

Don’t give up hope yet.

Good to know. We don’t just do postcards to be old fashioned! It’s a great way to have a task that lets one interact with the locals. We’ve had wonderful conversations waiting in line for stamps with people who live where we’re traveling. And also, interacting with people when sending them off. We try not to just drop them at our hotel.

Our other adventure when we’re traveling is for my husband to get a haircut. We met the mayor of a small town in Costa Rico since he was the barber! It took a little longer than usual because he kept having to step outside to settle local disputes! In our recent travels to Morocco, I had a heartfelt talk with a mother in a souk barbershop who is worried the current unrest might spread to Morocco.

I’ve had them arrive within a couple weeks while others have been close to a couple months. It partly depends on the country, if they were placed in a mailbox or mailed at a post office, and where within the country they’re mailed from. They have all arrived.

I absolutely love the idea of sending postcards from places you're travelling in. I have done that and wish to continue. I didn't do it this time we visited Lisbon though, in part because we were doing so much exploring I didn't think to schedule in time to find a post office.

For me, it's a treat to get a postmark from the place you're travelling in.

A few years ago, we were visiting the Outer Banks of North Carolina and I wrote myself a postcard and mailed it from there (I think specifically Kitty Hawk). When we received the postcard, it was postmarked Raleigh, NC! That was really strange. You know how far Raleigh is from the Outer Banks? It's about 3 or 4 hours away! I guess the post office in Kitty Hawk just gathers the mail and delivers them to some outpost in Raleigh to have them sorted and mailed. Totally didn't go the way we planned.

I went to Italy this fall. My niece wanted me to send her postcards ("like you used to do"), so I was determined to do so. While postcard racks used to be ubiquitous outside every souvenir shop in every town in Italy (I started going there in 1999), they were darned hard to find this time. A few shops had a few postcards, most of which appeared to have been around for quite awhile. I think the shops are finding that people do just send a photo from their phone.

The other issue was stamps. They used to be sold in tabacchi (shops that sell tobacco and many other things), but I had no luck this year. I've always known that the Italian postal service is notorious for slow service, but I decided to try it on a rainy day. I took a number and then waited 40 minutes to buy four stamps to send postcards to the U.S. The clerk had to go in back somewhere to find them - and then I think he had to ask a supervisor for help. The four stamps cost euro 9.80 ($10.67). They've convinced me! I don't want to send postcards anymore.

Upside this year: the postcards did arrive at my niece's home, and it didn't take as long as I was expecting it to.

I send postcards from our trips to a certain woman I used to work with in the back when. She was a postcard collector. She had a love of travel and we talked about that at the time. She retired, and then later , I retired. So I send these cards upwards of 10 years. I do not know if or when she gets them. I always date and time them with a synopsis of where and what we are doing.
I don’t know if she is alive or dead. She probably has her collection of cards with my name and places on them stashed somewhere. I think of her when I write them. It is like touching the sky between us.

The last bunch of postcards I mailed from a post office in Italy to the USA never arrived.
A few were mailed to friends in Europe and their cards never arrived either.

Just got one of our postcards from Morocco…just shy of 3 weeks to get here!

A cool gift idea…My husband saves postcards. For good friends who regularly send them from their travels, he puts together 10+ years of them, tied together with a colourful ribbon. He gives them back to them and they can then relive some of their travel adventures over the years.

I've always been a postcard sender. Though in recent years, I've gone to a new way of doing them.

Back in the day, I did the standard stuff: hunt down an appropriate postcard image in a shop, buy it, write it up, find a stamp, etc.

Nowadays I use an app for everything except capturing the photo. It may cut out some of the "interactions" (at a shop, at the post office) but I don't recall those being particularly meaningful (mostly just time-consuming). The important bits are 1) picking an appropriate image; 2) someone receiving the card.

I use an app called TouchNote. I find it meets all my needs for postcards. It's pretty simple - start with a photo on your phone, you can tweak it/add your own text on the image (assuming you know how), then you choose one of their designs, upload your photo, add addresses, and have them do the rest. We routinely send a handful of cards to friends around the world while we are on our trips (and we send one to ourselves, it's a nice little souvenir to have waiting in our mail when we get home). Our friends and families (appear to) love getting them in the mail. Delivery times vary wildly, that's part of the fun.

There's something very different about receiving an actual printed, color postcard in the mail (and ours are all one-of-a-kind), so much nicer than getting a text message or email. At least to me. YMMV.

I’ll still send them. Like finding them, composing a note, getting a stamp, finding a post box.

I have a collection of them. I appreciate their depictions of some of the places I’ve visited over decades of travel. Grand Canyon, Eiffel Tower, Canyon De Shelly, Bodie, Vegas, Yellowstone, US Capital, Buckingham Palace, Florida Everglades, Disneyland, Alcatraz, Mt Rushmore, Golden Gate Bridge, Monument Valley, Mt St Helens, Graumans Chinese Theatre, Chaco Canyon, Kansas City, Yosemite, Carlsbad Caverns, San Diego Zoo, Grand Tetons, Versailles, Santa Fe, Dallas, Bisti Badlands, Cape Canaveral, Seattle, Vancouver, Lake Geneva, Hampton Palace, Reno, Mt Rainer, Fort Worth, Chicago, Statue of Liberty, Boston and Havana.

My collection also includes postcards from the Santa Clara Valley in the 1950’s. It’s where I grew up and watched the valley’s evolution from fruit orchards, walnut trees, artichokes, strawberry fields, to IBM, Fairchild, Hewlett-Packard; The Valley of The Hearts Delight to Silicon Valley.

Postcards depict history.

I’m glad others still keep the Dying Art of Postcard Sending alive, I thought I was waging a one man battle. Handy postcard tip: in Britain the Royal Mail are duty bound to deliver anything with a stamp on it (within reason!). Thus when I’ve not been able to find a postcard I have pressed a beer mat into service (soak off one side with a little of whatever your tipple is to give it an added je ne sais quoi and peel off the least interesting side, and hey presto! - postcard!). Doesn’t matter what the shape is either. Never not had one delivered!

My one man crusade to have Mild restored to all English pubs remains an ongoing tilt at windmills, although I’m gathering support, I’m sure. Just you wait and see…oh yes….

Ian

P.S. Re the reasons for sending postcards, Claudia is a woman after my own heart!

I don't often notice large racks of postcards out on the street like one used to, but they are still for sale in art museums' shops and many churches large enough to have a souvenir counter. Most of the images will be of the interior of the building or art in the collection, of course.

You used to be able to buy a postcard for the equivalent of 20 cent (US)--or even less back in the 1970s--and mail it to the US for considerably less than a dollar. Now the whole shebang can cost close to 3 euros. I believe the personalized cards based on your own photos are a lot cheaper than that; I assume they're mailed in the US if that's where the recipient is, so you avoid international postage rates. I think they're a great idea, though I've never sent or received one.

I believe the personalized cards based on your own photos are a lot cheaper than that; I assume they're mailed in the US if that's where the recipient is, so you avoid international postage rates.

Actually not a whole lot cheaper than that, IIRC, probably around that price. But it's SO much simpler (assuming you're happy with your photos). I believe the company that does them has multiple shipping locations - one or more in the US, also one in the UK I think, perhaps others. We typically send out about 10 cards to addresses mostly in the US, but a few scattered elsewhere in the world (some as far as Thailand). They all seem to get to their addressee (eventually - Thailand obviously takes longer than domestic US delivery, but costs no more).

I like the service because it's simple, it just works (IIRC delivery to US is about 7-10 days, add another week or so for Thailand), and and best of all, it allows me to choose my own image(s), and I can do it from anyplace in the world that has an internet connection. I've "sent" cards from some pretty remote places with virtually no (or highly unreliable) postal service and it's easy as pie. Hard to beat that.

@treemoss2 wrote:

I send postcards from our trips to a certain woman I used to work with in the back when. She was a postcard collector. She had a love of travel and we talked about that at the time. She retired, and then later , I retired. So I send these cards upwards of 10 years. I do not know if or when she gets them. I always date and time them with a synopsis of where and what we are doing.

I don’t know if she is alive or dead. She probably has her collection of cards with my name and places on them stashed somewhere. I think of her when I write them. It is like touching the sky between us.

That is a lovely practice! Does your friend/colleague not write back to you once in a while to acknowledge the postcards? Seems rather strange not to.

Our 3 grandsons still het post cards. Only failure was from Egypt. Never arrived. In Turkey our guide told us it is unlikely so we brought postcards home and mailed them from home. BEST place is Lockroy station in Antarctica. Before visiting we wrote 20 post cards purchased in Ushuaia en route. Charge was either $1 U.S., 1 British pound, or 1 euro. And they take credit cards. They all arrived although it took 2-4 months. One boat from Falkland’s comes weekly to the station. Then mailed from Falkland to London. Then onward.

Correction to my earlier post: From Italy this year, I mailed four postcards to the same U.S. address from the same mailbox outside the post office on September 27. Three arrived on a timely basis. The fourth arrived yesterday (Nov. 28)!