Last time we were in France we had our passports stolen, so last we had to go to Florence to get new ones. We got to visit both the US and the French consulates.

The US consulate is guarded by (Italian) armed guards. In order to get in you have to go through a metal detector, leave your cellphone and camera to the guards, and if you had planned to bring in an computer to keep your kid busy during the wait... well, you get to walk back to the car and leave it there, as you can't take it inside the building, and you can't even leave it at the door. You then take a ticket, exchange war stories with the other people waiting to get their passports, and eventually get to a window where you receive the full attention of an employee that helps you fill the forms, collects the various documents needed, and finally charges the amount for a new passport to your favourite credit card. The passports will be mailed to us in 2 weeks.

The French consulate was... closed on Friday (Thursday was a Holyday, so obviously Friday was off too). On Monday I came back, entered the seemingly empty building that the consulate shares with the French Cultural Center. After looking around for a while I finally came accross an office where a very nice lady informed me that indeed this was the place where I could get my passport renewed. She proceeded to help me fill the forms and collected the various documents needed, including the receipt from the post-office showing that I had sent the amount required to get the passport to the French embassy. As she was alone in the office and kept being interrupted by phone calls this took a while. The passports will be ready in a month and I will have to return to Florence to pick them up.

Overall the 2 processes took up similar amounts of time...

posted by michel, 2005-06-06