Souvenir shopping: you’re on a trip, the weather’s fine, you’re on the beach. You’re happy and relaxed and suddenly you’re in a gift shop you’d have driven past in your hometown. Your spending inhibitions have been left miles back. In your hometown you hesitate before paying four dollars for coffee, but you hand over thirty dollars for a lobster-shaped keychain without a second thought.
Why We Lose Our Minds in Gift Shops
Vacation brain has sunk its teeth into your brain, and now you’re buying a souvenir. And nobody knows quite what a souvenir is until they’re standing in a touristy gift shop five minutes before their shuttle bus pulls out of the parking lot clutching a snow globe they crossed an ocean to purchase. Souvenir shopping is the phenomenon of buying things no sane person in their right mind would ever touch with a ten-foot pole back home, but are inexplicably smitten with on vacation. Here are a few classic souvenirs, and why we buy them:
The Fridge Magnet Collection
It starts out innocuously enough. You go on a trip, see a magnet, and bring one home. Maybe two. But next time you’re on a trip you know you have to get at least one. Then before you know it, it’s been ten years and you didn’t plan on it happening but your fridge doors resemble world maps.
Tiny Spoons for Nobody’s Soup
The souvenir spoon. This one’s hard to explain. Nobody in their right mind purchases a collector’s spoon on vacation. Except that they do! Now Grandma has another tiny spoon that’s too little for soup and too cute for cereal propping untouched in a wooden wall display.
The Hat That Only Works on Vacation
The beach hat. Nobody wears a giant floppy sun hat with a thick braided straw band around it in their hometown. Unless it happens to be on a beach. Then everyone has one. It’ll look perfectly at home at the grocery store… next to the beach.
T-Shirts That Announce Your Travels
The classic travel T-shirt. “I Survived the Grand Canyon.” “My Parents Went to Florida and All I Got Was This Shirt.” These will get maybe one wear (at the Grand Canyon; in Florida), and eventually find their way to the back of your closet where they reside as pajama tops.
Snow Globes and Other Dust Collectors
The snow globe. For four seconds this is the coolest thing you own. For the next twenty years it’s a dust collector on your shelf. Bonus points if airport security takes it.
The “Authentic” Item Made Somewhere Else
The “local” bracelet you purchase from the vendor on the street in a far-flung country. Except it isn’t from that far-flung country. The little tag on the bracelet says it was manufactured three countries from where you purchased it. You only noticed after you flipped it over.
Gifts for People Back Home
And of course, the classic trinkets for friends and family back home. The mug that says “Aloha” that your coworker uses to hold pens at his office. These are purchased for people, but mostly serve as proof that you thought of them when you were on your trip.
In the End, What Matters is the Journey
All of this stuff will be shoved into suitcases that are overstuffed, over budget, and over weight limits. Because the souvenirs don’t mean jack without the trip they came home from. A free seashell or crinkled up plane ticket cover will outshone the souvenir you spend big bucks on in the tourist shop. Ultimately, it’s all just stuff. But good days end, trips end, and sometimes you just want a memento to hold on to the memory.
