I had nothing but the best service when I finally got off my butt and completed a U.S. passport application late last month. (I had the pictures in hand already.)
These days, American passports are surely expensive ($75 in my case), but I did not shell out any more for “expedited service” on the theory that I won’t be going to Canada in the foreseeable months.
From what I had heard on TV and from real-life people, I was supposed to wait months and months for the thing. I didn’t send the app in until the third week of April but then it came back to me because I had sent the wrong amount of money in. My bad!
I got that puppy back in the mail ASAP and Monday, May 12, I received in the mail both my brand-new passport in one envelope and my old expired passport, which they mark “cancelled” of course, in another mailing. All told, the correct check and correct app got a passport back to me in just over 10 working days. This was noticeably faster than my prior mail passport applications in prior decades.
These sites frequently allude to US -Canada crossings, and I would urge anyone with any inkling of going to the Great White North to grit their teeth, pay the money, and apply for a U.S. Passport. They aren’t going to get any cheaper – not anytime soon, anyway – and if my experience is a guide they aren’t going to be processed any quicker.
I’m less than a half hour from a crossing into Canada, although I don’t go over often. I will be doing so later this summer however, and my passport will be right there with me.
Did Eurail once into the eastern block you would not believe all the entrance and exit visas stamped with the location and a little train symbol. Quite a conversation piece.
You’ll soon need a Passport just to go across the border in Tijuana to buy a bottle of Kaluha!
…thats gonna make a 2hr return border crossing a 4hr border crossing. Cheaper now to get the Kaluha at Costco anyway.
Cruise ships which used to just take a valid drivers license for ID, also are now asking for and will soon, if not already, REQUIRE a valid passport or you cannot even get on the boat!
Maybe the U.S. gummit is embarrassed by the number of visitors who go to Canada, fall in love with the place, and then won’t go back. (just kidding).
How does it work for Canadians? Do y’all need to produce your passport both before you enter the U.S. and then again at (Douanes) Canada Customs to get back in?
Maybe the U.S. gummit is embarrassed by the number of visitors who go to Canada, fall in love with the place, and then won’t go back. (just kidding).
How does it work for Canadians? Do y’all need to produce your passport both before you enter the U.S. and then again at (Douanes) Canada Customs to get back in?
Actually, a passport isn’t a bad thing going into Canada, either. They want proof of citizenship, and while your driver’s license and birth certificate will accomplish that, the passport lumps it into one document.
Al, I believe it would be the other way around. We would need a passport to visit the USA, and just a drivers license to come home. Perhaps it will change in a few years.
Oh, yes, the customs “frank” as status symbol, I remember them well! My first passport was for a trip to Europe with Dad in 1970. Even then the European Community countries did not bother to stamp North Am/European passports once inside the EC going from one nation to the next, but we got transit stamps going into and out of Scandinavia, also Switzerland (which you may recall until a relative few years ago didn’t like to go into multinational arrangements with anyone).
The most fun was, as you said, traipsing thru the Commies. We got the most elaborate frankings for Helmstedt/Marienborn and then back again. IIRC this was the Hamburg-Berlin route and our Eurailpass was good up to the last West German station requiring a separate ticket from the E. German border, paid for with Dollars converted one-to-one into E. German “Reichsmarks.” Switched engines at the border and the E. German leg head-end was a steamer. Wasn’t allowed to photograph it either! (I’ve already sung a longer version of this story on “Classic Trains” so enuf for now.)
In 1977 the only intra-European border frank I could get was at Schaffhausen, Switzerland, where I kindly asked Herr Schaffner (conductor also being on-board customs agent) for a Stempel for my Pass. He complied, “Kachunk”! like the old-fashioned self-inking purple price stamps grocery stores used before 1980. After having given me this “boon,” he said, “And I am now going to tcharge you one Amairee-can Dohlar.” Everyone else in the compartment was Swiss, and everyone else laughed.