Cards for All Occasions
One of the things that truly surprised me here and which I grew to actually like, is the habit of sending greeting cards. Everyone does it here and on every possible occasion. If you go to a christening, or to reception (as well as in thousand other cases), you not only bring a card for the occasion, but you usually send another one to thank your host on the next day. Thanks to this tradition, the cards business is doing very well here. There is a special store specializing in cards, and every pharmacy has an aisle specifically dedicated to them. Every gift store has an obligatory greeting card department. The choice is huge and many of the cards are very ingenious and funny. Given the nature of our technological era, it is really special and nice to receive something from a close person that won’t get lost in the abyss of our Facebook archive. Prices start at about $1, but they usually hover around $4. My favorite store is the Alphabets store (5th Street & Avenue A), and Delphinium Home in Hell’s Kitchen (47th St. & 9th Aveł http://www.delphiniumhome.com/).
