I had a lot of fun reading the recent New York Times article on the joy of small, everyday souvenirs: “Want a Vacation Souvenir? Buy Toothpaste.”
Like author Joshua Hunt, I love visiting drugstores when travelling abroad. Along with supermarkets, bodegas and corner stores, stationers, and secondhand shops.
This is partly for practical reasons — so many times I see a beautiful and distinctive picture, rug, cookbook, or vase, but I share a studio apartment with my husband and our Yorkie. We just don’t have the room.
When travelling, I’m also usually prepping for or leading a tour. There’s not a lot of time to shop, or extra space in my suitcase. Some finds merit an exception — a beautiful Rodier coat at a consignment shop near the Sorbonne (take our Paris tour and I will show you some of my favourite secondhand spots), a silk embroidered scene of West Lake in Hanoi, a bottle of tequila that’s never going to be exported outside Mexico. But my usual rule is, practical, inexpensive souvenirs I can pick up quickly.
That doesn’t mean I miss out on souvenirs. The article brought up lots of memories of past trips, from snuggling into a classical fisherman’s sweater while backpacking through Ireland as a student, to tasting sakura (cherry-blossom) flavour potato chips in Japan. (It’s a combo that sounds weird but is delicious.) Here are some of my favourite places to get souvenirs that are small in size and budget but evoke invaluable memories. What are yours?
Supermarkets and grocery stores
Hunt captured shopping in Japan perfectly with his description of the joy of “drinking from the well of everyday experience — which, in Tokyo, runs deep with small consumer delights.” One of the everyday highlights of a trip to Japan this past spring was stopping at the 7-Eleven or Lawson (or Mister Donut, or Uniqlo, or one the hundreds of wonderful specialty shops in Kyoto). We loved trying all the prepared foods, especially the onigiri (stuffed rice triangles, often wrapped in seaweed) and the roasted chestnut soft-serve.
I cannot go to a foreign supermarket without browsing the potato chip flavours. It’s almost as fun as eating the chips. This obsession started when I was a grad student in the UK and bag of Tyrell’s cider vinegar crisps or Walker’s cheese and onion was part of a welcome study break. I’ve tried, but I don’t love, the roast chicken flavours.
In Vietnam, Lay’s nori seaweed were surprisingly addictive. My husband liked the Manhattan rib-eye Lay’s; I was more on the fence about those.
My go-to in Italy are the Crocchia “ondulate” chips. They’re like Ruffles, the chips served with French onion dip at many a summer picnic at my grandparents’ house, but better.
I also like to see what fruits and vegetables are the most popular, or the most unfamiliar to me, whether in a farmer’s market or the local corner store. I’ve spent a lot of time visiting southern Arizona, and the prickly pear so popular there and in Mexico is also, I found out, beloved in Sicily. OK, a prickly pear is not a good souvenir, but it’s still fun to look.
When in France, I always, always bring back cheese. Usually cheese from Normandy, where I lived for a couple of years in the early 2000s and discovered the stinkier the cheese, the more I liked it. Livarot and Pont-l’Évêque are two pungent favourites, but there are plenty of delicious milder cheeses too.
Last spring, for the first time I brought back a big wheel of Reblochon from the Jura region in the Alps. I had long wanted to make my husband tartiflette, a rich casserole topped with this nutty, creamy cheese, and spontaneously bought it from a co-op grocery in Paris. It took a little bit of planning to keep the cheese cool and its funk relatively contained until I could put it in my fridge at home, but it was worth the effort.
(NB for Americans: A lot of people think you can’t bring cheese back to the US, but in most cases it’s allowed. Canadians, you can also bring back cheese.)
Pharmacies
A pharmacy is one of my first stops when arriving in a new place, because I’ve invariably forgotten toothpaste or hair gel. Like Joshua Hunt, I usually choose what catches my eye and fits my mood.
I’ve become hooked on self-heating steam eye masks from Japan. They are a godsend after a long day touring or on the plane, where they help me avoid the migraines that are sometimes the result of air travel. The lavender ones are especially relaxing.
When in France, I’ll also always take a moment to look at the NUXE shelf. Although I hem and haw over trying something new, I usually end up sticking with the Huile Prodigieuse dry oil, a mainstay in my bathroom for more than 20 years.
In India, the Himalaya brand neem face wash always feels so refreshing. When living in Delhi in the late 2000s, I also liked to make or buy ubtans, face masks made from gram or besan flour, milk, a bit of turmeric, and perhaps some herbs.
Bookstores and stationers
One of the great travel mysteries is how books transform into iron once they go into your suitcase, weighing you down. So I tend not to get many on the road, as tempting as those shelves may be. Bu greeting cards in other languages are fun, lightweight souvenir to send to friends and family.
Office supplies like pens and notebooks are long-lasting souvenirs. My very favourites are the Exacompta plastic folders and Clairefontaine notebooks ubiquitous in France. And it’s fun to go through the shelves of translations of big English-language names like James Patterson and Agatha Christie. Who seems to be most popular? What do the covers look like? How many titles can I figure out even if I don’t really know the language?
What are your favourite souvenirs?
There are so many other small delights — Haldiram’s snacks and cotton kurtas from India, coffee and panela from Colombia, dried fruit from Taiwan, Leone pastilles from Italy. And I never leave Toronto without some Coffee Crisps tucked in my suitcase.
What souvenirs, big or small, do you like to get to remind you of your travels? What’s your most cherished souvenir? Let us know in the comments. If you have photos of your favourite overseas snacks and sundries, send them to us at info@classicalpursuits.com and we will add them to this post.
Travel with Classical Pursuits in 2024 and 2025
We are headed to Paris, Santa Fe, Morocco, India and more. Learn about all of our tours here, or contact Natalie at natalie@worldwidequest.com or toll-free at 1-800-387-1483.
