I am curious about the mail service in Eaurope, specifically Paris, Athens and Venice. We are seasoned Latin America travelers, and well aware that mail service between the United States and Mexico and Central America is sketchy.

We're going to be in western Europe for October and November - wondering about the time frame for postcards and letters from metropolitan areas to the US. I realize that in many countries, postcard transit times are hard to predict, as they tend to be the last pieces to be added to a shipment ... anyone know how long it generally takes from the above cities?

It took our post cards 3 1/2 weeks to get from Venice to the U.S.

If you put an "air mail" stamp on it, it goes faster.

Hello scdreamer, I can't remember how long postcards have taken from Paris or Athens as it has be awhile since I received any from those cities but postcards and letters have normally arrived from Venice to where I live in Northern California in 7 to 10 days.

Lately we've put our postcards in envelopes and sent them at the first-class airmail rate. Much quicker, and the cards arrive mostly unscathed. When were in Normandy a few years ago we used envelopes commerating the anniversary of D-Day, which the recipients loved.

Priority mail postcards from Netherlands take a week. Cost €0,60.

We received a postcard today postmarked Sept.25 from the French Riviera. Cost E .85.

In June and July we sent several postcards home to Oregon from Paris. They arrived in 2 days! We were shocked. We mailed a few packages home as well and those only took 1 week.

We found postcards from most countries we visited took about a week or 10 days - except Italy - which ranged from a month to didn't arrive. Can;t comment on Athens.

I sent my mom a postcard on the 21st from Germany and she had received it within the week.

One year I mailed a package to myself from Germany and it took about 6 weeks.

>it took about 6 weeks.
You have to specify "Air" or "Surface" when you send a package. Surface would take 4 to 6 weeks usually, but costs a lot less.

Most mail from France arrives at US 'entry points' (New York, Los Angeles...) in 48 hours and any additional time for delivery depends on the US Postal Service.

Sorry hopscothch you are a bit out of date with your pricing. A priority stamp from The Netherlands for outside Europe is €0.85. Inside Europe it costs €0.69.
Post takes at most a couple of days to arrive in the US then it is down to the US postal services how long they take over it. I have sent cards to LA which have arrived three days later and another time will take two weeks to get there.

Update. USPS has eliminated surface mail and with it the 'M' bags. Everything must go Air Mail! I will check with a European source about any changes in their practices. One way to assure prompt delivery of mail is to provide a legible address. Poland is suggesting:
Name
Steet address

City, State, Postal Code
Country

Note the space between street and city.

Mail with an illegible address is simply put aside until someone has time to decipher it. Post mail at a main PO. Mail can be posted on a Thursday and not leave the country until Monday or Tuesday!

The best thing to do is to put the card in an envelop (same price - €0.85 for the US from France) and write "PAR AVION - BY AIR MAIL" on the upper left corner or even simpler, to use an air-mail envelop.

Actually, the new word is "prioritaire - priority" for mail. 1st class mail always goes by the fastest method from any European country. I suppose they got rid of the "par avion - air mail" wording simply because high speed rail is sometimes faster than air.

I allow 10 days either direction between west coast US and Europe.

I know not strictly relevant to the OP as they are not in Rome, and I have no experience of posting to the US.

I found that the postcards I sent from Rome itself arrived much more slowly than those posted from the Vatican post office. This applied to both the UK and South Africa. In the latter case the Vatican postcards arrived within days, whereas the Rome postcards took several weeks.