Magic of Souvenirs

When you travel a lot, the destinations you visit and the people you meet start to blur together. Souvenirs are one of the best ways to help keep the memories alive and give you a peek into your adventures.

I have tons of pictures on my phone of the different vacations we've taken and places we've seen, but years later it gets difficult to remember exactly which country or city the photo was taken. So, in addition to photos, below are some of our favorite go-to souvenir ideas.

ORNAMENTS

Christmas is my personal favorite holiday. Every year when we decorate the tree, we are reminded of our travel adventures. A painted St. Lucian beach at sunset, a cruise ship, Mickey Mouse ears with the year and our favorite characters on top, a troll to represent Norway. Not only is our tree unique to us, but we get to reminisce every year.

If you don't celebrate Christmas or put up a tree, you can still get the ornaments. They aren't "christmas-y" in decoration so you could display them on an iron stand with lots of arms or create a chandelier of your adventures.

Bonus: If you can find a hand-painted ornament, it adds to the magic of memory. You help support a local artist and get a beautiful one-of-a-kind decoration in the process.

LOCAL ARTWORK

There are local artists anywhere you go. When you find one around town, they are typically in progress of creating their next masterpiece and will usually have previous paintings, prints or sculptures for sale.

You could find a painting of central park or the colorful buildings of Copenhagen, a miniature horse carved and painted by a local or a poncho sewn by local.

What better way to remind you of the places you've traveled than with something hand-made and unique?

POSTCARDS

You can find postcards anywhere and they are an inexpensive souvenir. Get one from each city/country you visit and write your experiences on the postcard. What was your favorite restaurant? Did you go on any interesting tours? Found a bar or pup with an amazing atmosphere?

Write it all down and keep a postcard journal of your travels. If you ever go back to that destination you can revisit those places or tell others traveling about the best spots. Writing them down will also help jog your memory about the details years later.

SPICES OR LIQUOR

Food & drink varies from place to place. Picking up a spice, hot sauce or liquor specific to that area is a fun souvenir. You don't have to cook with them or drink them, but you could display all the variations to showcase the interesting labels and languages. You don't have buy big bottles of it, most places will have mini sizes for a more inexpensive find and easier to pack for the trip home.

Have fun searching for those unique souvenirs!

Tommy & Amanda Story

StorybooksTravel@gmail.com