How to Bring Home the Best Souvenirs
In this edition of The Gift, we’re sharing some tips for bringing back excellent gifts from vacation. Plus: very fancy toiletry bottles and the slippers our travel expert wears all the time.
I have a very distinct memory of visiting Istanbul with my family when I was 15: We spent an entire afternoon at the Grand Bazaar with the express purpose of buying gifts for friends back home. For hours and hours, I watched my parents haggle with the vendors over handmade jewelry, beaded pouches, and bagged spices.
As a teen, this bored me, and I didn’t quite understand it. Why would someone want a memento for a trip they weren’t on? Wouldn’t a gift almost toe the line into bragging territory?
But done right, a souvenir is neither an obligation nor is it a flex. It’s a way to share and extend the privilege of travel long after you’ve come home — it’s a gift that shows someone else that while you were out enjoying the world in all its jaw-dropping glory, at least a small part of you was thinking, “You know who’d love this? So-and-so.”
It finally clicked for me a few years ago when a dear friend, who had just finished gallivanting across Europe in a quintessentially early-20s solo trip, came home with a gift for me: a pasta-portioning tool from Naples, sort of like this one. It’s a charming rustic plank with various-sized holes to measure different servings of pasta — a nod to our college inside joke of never being able to cook the right amount for a single dinner. To imagine she thought of me at all while Finding Herself during her big adventure made my heart warm. And I’m reminded of that feeling every time I make (the right amount of) pasta to this day.
Below are some of the best things Wirecutter journalists have toted back home from trips — plus some tips on how to find really thoughtful souvenirs while you’re away (including for yourself!).
- Get items unique to your destination: The sweet spot of a good souvenir lies at the intersection of practicality and uniqueness — an upgraded version of an everyday thing that might otherwise be hard to come by at home. (That means no kitschy bottle openers or scratchy tees, thank you very much.) For instance, a couple years ago, I returned from Japan with loads of fragrant tea from a historic city famous for its tea shops. I’ve since found this stash to be a special, practical, and at times, great last-minute gift for many in my life.
- Pay attention to local trends, and bring ’em back home: When editorial director Lauren Sullivan noticed everyone in Paris sporting these chic fanny packs, she was compelled to snag one of her own. Its frontal design made it easy to travel with during the trip, and when she returned stateside, she was the trendsetter with the cool Parisian bag. No big deal.
- For a no-brainer option, collect the same item across destinations: “When I was living in Europe and traveling a lot,” says travel expert Maria Adelmann, “I started collecting enamel pins and displaying them on a canvas banner that actually fit in my tiny apartment.” It’s like a self-guided treasure hunt, with the reward at the end being a very cute and simple way to commemorate your globe-trotting. Maria says when it comes to collectible souvenirs for yourself, look for something inexpensive, packable, and widely available that you’ll actually use or display, like socks or postcards.
- Local (nonperishable) fare is a can’t-go-wrong: Wirecutter journalists Lisa Fischer and Hali Potters very sweetly exchanged tinned fish from their respective European trips last year. Hali found a tinned sardine store in the South of France, and “in a fugue state,” bought somewhere around 20 fishy tins to dole out to friends upon her return. (She also snagged this extremely cute tin opener and wants to host a tinned-fish party to put it to use.) On her end, Lisa brought back a spread from a tinned fish spot in Lisbon so beloved that she went back three times in her five days there. In getting Hali that spread, she got to share that experience with a pal back home, evidence in hand.
