CNN Postcards are brief and vivid travel stories capturing the wonder, joy, humor or drama of our adventures. Submit your own postcard-sized travel story below!
Welcome to our first roundup of CNN Postcards: short first-person travel tales capturing the highs, and sometimes lows, of travel. We are kicking off this new series with contributions from CNN Travel staff, but we want to hear your stories and see your photos and video for possible inclusion in the series. A submission form awaits below the stories, which will hopefully inspire you to share!
It was a chilly April, but in the midday sun it was warm enough to sit on the balcony to eat prosciutto, local arugula and the exquisite jars of homemade tomato sauce sold by the woman down on the corner. Visiting out of season, we could afford to rent the clifftop house in Peschici and drink in endless views of the cold sea. Only one restaurant was open in the evening and we had the waiter to ourselves. He held our little girl so we could enjoy our meal, and laughed with genuine delight when she peed on him. (Barry Neild)
Several months after I finished cancer treatment, still mid-pandemic, Sri Lanka reopened to travel. Without consulting my doctor, I booked a five-week itinerary around the island, figuring that was enough to make the quarantine awaiting me back in Hong Kong worth it.
It was a series of incredible firsts: first visit to South Asia, first trip since getting sick, first time seeing elephants. At many of the country’s most popular attractions, there were very few tourists. Even though I have a mask on in this photo at the Dambulla Caves, I know there’s a giant smile behind it. (Lilit Marcus)
A tangle of exposed wires spilled from the steering wheel. My girlfriend, Kate, noticed too, but we didn’t say anything to the nice man driving us to the outskirts of London, beyond the Tube, in what looked like a hot-wired vehicle. He was taking us to see another.
Two Americans traveling abroad, we had the novel idea of buying a used car to drive around Europe. This was the most run-down one we’d seen. The radio was broken, the upholstery torn. After we politely said we weren’t interested, he suddenly drove off.
We laughed. “Now how do we get back?” (David G. Allan)
Visiting Mexico with our toddler, we took taxis around Isla Mujeres, an island off Cancun. Hailing a cab one evening, we found other passengers already aboard. But they said nothing, so we squeezed in, my son balanced on my lap.
We got used to sharing taxis. Then one day, a driver was accompanied by his family. With a stack of tortillas on the dashboard, his wife prepared beef tacos. She handed her husband a taco, then assembled one for her son.
I can still see the boy’s big, sleepy eyes, and the taco made on the dashboard of his father’s taxi. (Jeanne Bonner)
They flitted onto the jungle gym beside me — first one child, then two. We hung silently, like crows gathered in “The Birds.”
I’d faced challenges on this, my first French camping trip, but handled them with the full courage of my seven years. An explorer in a strange land, I’d hammered tent pegs and said “merci” to the ice-cream man.
Alien sounds shot out of the boy’s mouth. The little girl stared, waiting for my response. I leapt off and ran back to the safety of my family. My cheeks flared hot with deep, enduring shame. I wasn’t cosmopolitan yet. (Maureen O’Hare)
Do you have a brief story that could have only happened far from home? Did you fall in love with a place that you visited? Have you experienced a moment of immersion or an uncanny encounter while traveling? Submit your postcard below.
