When I do talks on travel a tip I give is to never buy stamps with your postcards. Some stores sell them, and it seems awfully convenient, but you then miss out on a trip to the post office.
Because it's a government facility, a post office reveals a lot about the country. Also, it may provide you with your one significant brush with the locals. Tourists sleep in hotels, eat in restaurants, visit museums; they're cut off, for the most part, from the everyday life of a place. And there's nothing more everyday than a post office. The chapter on Iowa in my last book ends with a scene in the Oskaloosa post office.
I went to the one on 17th Street yesterday - possibly the cheeriest, most efficient post office in Broward - not for local color but to mail two 9x12 envelopes. And yet...
"Do you have some white out?" a woman asked the man at the counter. "I misspelled my mother-in-law's name."
