Poste Italiane update

Of the eight boxes that we posted, five have already arrived -just waiting on three from Rome. If you are prepared for different rules at each post office and fill out the dreaded bolletini with the minimum info required then Poste Italiane is pretty efficient and they have very speedy boats ;)  our sea mail parcels took only a few weeks.

Poste Italiane (2)

After being given a hard time by a dragon lady at the San Marco post office we were served by a very efficient, friendly woman at the San Polo PT and got our three boxes posted with no problems.  She happily gave us forms for other boxes that we had, whereas the San Marco woman wouldn't even give us bolletini for the boxes that we had bought.  It is so much easier to complete the forms when you are packing so that you remember what is in each box -also the post offices are very small and there is never much room to filling forms etc.

Got our tickets for Torino so we're all organised.  It's raining quite heavily at the moment so I'm staying in for a while, I've had a bit of a cold and am having a slack day today.

Posteitaliane

We need to send quite a few things home and after a few hours tracked down a post office that is where it was supposed to be -  according to the tourist maps and google - and was open :)  We're dreading the whole process as we spent hours last trip chasing up the 'bolletini" or forms that must accompany each parcel - most post offices don't have them -they run out.  They have the boxes that you need but not the forms.  For example during our last time we couldn't find a post office in Milano with the forms -not the central post office which is enormous nor any of the others that we went to by taxi in the rain with our "regulation boxes" boxes -we ended up using DHL in Milano.

Another time in that trip we got stuffed around in Venezia when a postal official at one post office said that we had to post a whole pile of glass pieces for mosaics in small parcels.  Jules and I made up about 20 small parcels- each item wrapped in bubble wrap and cardboard and each parcel individually addressed.  We went to the central PO which was then at the Rialto and the helpful PO person asked us why we just didn't put everything in one box instead of having so many little ones! :) :)
(It's not a language thing & we have quite a reasonable understanding of the vagaries of sending stuff to Australia.)


This time we have our boxes  and once again no bolletini :(  and for those of you ever looking for the Post Office at Rialto, don't bother, the beautiful bulding has been sold to Benneton :(


Today is the day to tackle the post office again and Rob & I are procrastinating :)