Our summer trips in Europe have a souvenir buying fail-safe built in, because you carry what you buy. There’s no souvenir toting dromedary on this trip, but you. Since we each have one school-sized knapsack, this usually means items chosen are small and portable. This didn’t stop my oldest from buying a huge paper lantern that lived in her lap for the entire summer. It became her symbol of determination and defiance the entire trip, and hangs in her room to this day.
This has become a scale of importance in our family. How much do you love something–with the max being, would you hold it all summer on your lap just to get it home? The answer, sometimes, is yes.
On our first trip to Europe, I rediscovered the teacup. These were not your grandma’s teacup, but made by local artisans, each with their own style and flare. I have this mental fantasy of teacups as wee magical facilitators of relaxed afternoons in piles of pillows, sipping tea with the girls, talking for hours. Leave me to my dreams.
Each time we visited Europe I would buy a teacup and saucer for each of the girls. They now have an eclectic collection from many different countries. They can continue to add to their collection if they choose when they are older.
On our first visit to France I also discovered the market basket. Adorable. Had to have one of these baguette toting bags. No one told me that the market basket was the gate-way basket to a more extensive basket buying addiction. Every trip I seem to end up with another and have quite a collection by now. I may need a program. The biggest one I bought in Italy, and should have demanded a companion airline ticket. That one I loved so much it did spend the summer on my lap.
The girls gravitate to having keepsakes in collections. They’ve collected the more common dragons, fairy tale books, wizard wands, princess figures, star paper lanterns, to the less common little plastic ice cream spoons, samples of colored toilet paper, and the Do Not Disturb hotel signs in a various languages.
If the kids collect stones or shells, they write on the bottom of them in sharpies, where they’re from or a little dot and color-code list. They may remember where they are from now, but they won’t in five years or tomorrow.
When we stumble on to a magical little place, we return if we can. We came across a bead shop in Pezenas, France, set in little cave-like rooms. The girls fell in love with this quaint little shop, and the friendly people who ran it. The girls made key chains from big glassy beads. We spent hours there, and they wanted to go back the next day. Whenever we can, we make our way back to the Pezenas bead shop to repeat the magic.