Charlie: We sent home a box of things we weren’t using yesterday. This included our rain pants, never used, the shoes that Wynette bought that didn’t work out, and lots of cold weather gear since the weather has turned warmer. About 5 pounds. We have talked to a few other pilgrims who have sent things home.
The post office provides boxes for you. This helps them too I think because the boxes are a standard size, four sizes actually, and have a bar code on them for tracking.
It was about $50 for 2.5 km in a ‘large’ box, size three of four.
You fill out a form and then the clerk types them into the computer. That part could be a little more efficient, especially if you have a new clerk like we did.
The big problem was the return address. We talked to a women from England who said to put the to and from addresses the same. That caused no end of problems. We finally changed it to the address of our hotel and got it to work. So it took 45 minutes longer than it should have.
But we are thrilled to have five fewer pounds to carry. We took it all from Wynette and she is doing better with less extra weight on her foot.
I have to mail things overseas all the time and the US postal service does the same thing. I have to fill out all the forms in ink… then they type it all in by hand. Not like UPS where you can type it in and print out the label and any forms.
Henry Shapiro