Whenever I go somewhere new I like to pick up at least one souvenir.
My preference is fridge magnets because they’re small, light, cheap and easy to display at home. I’ll scope out the nicest tackiest option, usually I go for some kind of 3D moulded cityscape that is poorly painted.
I’ll only get a genuinely “nice” one if it is really outstanding (I do have a few actually nice looking ones from Canada). To me the tackiness of the souvenir is the fun of it!
I have started collecting the Starbucks coffee mugs if I come across them. The first one was from my first ever solo travel, for a work trip to Vancouver in 2018. I picked it up in the Starbucks I got an expensed drink from every morning before my journey to the office. So far our collection is five: Vancouver, Orlando, Montreal, Quebec Province, and Niagara Falls.
I like these mugs because they hold a good amount of tea and stack really well in the cupboard. A practical souvenir!
I will also buy an art print, or postcards to frame, if I come across one I really like. Bright colours and clean lines are what I like so I love the trend in recent years for travel posters in the modern-retro style. I got a couple of cool postcards and prints from Canada last year that I’ve framed.
For gifts for family I usually get some some kind of food treat like local sweets or biscuits. I’ve spent a small fortune on artisanal nougat in Carcassonne! I’m not normally so generous but the free samples blew my damn mind with how soft it was and how it tasted like honey rather than sugar!
This trip, along with the nougat, we have a fridge magnet, a print (in the featured image) and a postcard of an image I kept seeing on cute little biscuits tins but I can’t justify buying another tin I don’t have a use for (and wouldn’t fit in luggage!) so I have to settle for a postcard! And of course because we are in Carcassonne we got an expansion for our Carcassonne board game. I thought it’d be a good souvenir to have it in French bought in Carcassonne!
I also now keep maps and ticket stubs to stick into a scrapbook along with all the best photos, so I come home with random bits of leaflets and bits of papers to create my own special souvenir too!
