What Do You Collect When You Travel?

Everyone brings back something from their travels, whether that is simply memories and photographs, or something more. During our early days of traveling, which was all within the United States, we used to collect coffee mugs from everyplace we visited. We even bought special coffee mug racks to display all of our mugs with colorful pictures depicting what is unique about each location. While they were fun to look at, it very quickly became too much to display as the number of coffee mugs grew year after year. Since those days, we have gone with a different approach for finding things that we want to bring home with us to remind us of the places that we’ve visited.

DSC_9674
Painting of Quito, Ecuador
DSC_9658
Oil Painting from Paris
DSC_9681
Marionette from Prague
DSC_9661
Gluhwein Mug, Alabaster Vase from Egypt, and Greek Urn from Athens
DSC_9676
Hand-Stitched Tapestry from Panama City, Panama

Walk through any tourist shop and you will find many of the common things that people collect during their travels. Keychains, refrigerator magnets, shot glasses, coffee mugs, snow-globes, and pens are all among the items that you can usually find in almost any city around the world. Although we used to collect some of those items, now we try to find things that are more unique and often hand-made by local artisans. We love to get inexpensive paintings or small works of art from the different places that we’ve visited. When we buy a painting, we will purchase unframed so that it can be rolled up and protected during our flight back home. We keep them on display and can fondly remember where we found each of the individual items. Some items are very indicative of the city or country, others we simply found intriguing and we still make a connection to the country where we found it.

DSC_9670
Painting of the Colosseum in Rome
DSC_9669
Papyrus Artwork from Cairo
DSC_9655
Currency from Around the World
DSC_9678
Statue of an Alsace Woman from Strasbourg, France
DSC_9672
Etching of the Duomo in Florence, Italy

In addition to bringing back pieces of art or other unique items, we also bring back money from the places that we visit as well as tourist maps. It is our intention to one day make a collage out of all of the unique tourists maps that proudly display the top tourist attractions within the city. We also intend to someday display that currency that we’ve collected throughout our travels. And even though we purchase them prior to visiting different locations, we also collect the travel books that we use to plan our trips. Perhaps we’re a little weird, but we have a lot of travel items that we’ve collected on display throughout our home. We also have digital frames that rotate through photographs from our travels as well. Is there anything that you collect during your journeys and do you display them for others to see?

DSC_9682
Items on Display from France, Iceland, Bolivia, Spain, Ecuador, Mexico, India, and More
DSC_9664
Painting of Bran Castle
DSC_9652
Travel Books in Our Office
DSC_9663
India, Egypt, Germany, and Austria Sharing a Shelf
DSC_9684
Hand-Painted Plate from La Paz