Feature: Snail Mail

Here is what Lonely Planet: Italy has to say about the Vatican City Postal Service: "Said to provide a faster and more reliable service than the normal Italian postal system..." (Page 84, 6th Edition)

I decided to put this fact to the test. I purchased two postcards from a shop on the top of Saint Peters Basilica. A stamp from the vatican post office was €0.80. I mailed the postcard on Saturday June 11, just before 1pm. Before I left Rome, I decided to go to the post office. By this time it was 1:15pm and the post office had closed at 1pm.

I wasn't able to mail the other postcard until I arrived in a small town called Positano on the following Monday. It also cost me €0.80. The only difference this time is that the postman stuck a "Priority Mail" sticker on the postcard. The vatican post office did not.

Take a look at the postcards for yourself.

The Winner? Poste Italianne. Not only did it deliver the postcard two days faster, it did so from a spot further away from the destination (by about 200kms). One thing to note was that the Vatican City mailed postcard actually post marked "June 11". So what happened? Did it just sit at a sorting facility for two days until it was able to move through the system on Monday? Or is the Vatican postal service really just slower at processing mail?

One might argue that the slowdown was due to the lack of a "Priority Mail" sticker on the Vatican mailed item.