What travel momentos do you like to collect and display

[Mardi]

I'm not really a collector as such but we have a sort of tradition where I work that anyone who goes on a "big deal" kind of holiday - usually overseas - brings everyone back a small tacky souvenir. My husband and I have been to New York the last two years and we've brought back statues of liberty (first trip) and empire state buildings (second trip). So we all have nice little shelves of tourist cough that I wouldn't have in my home but is nice nevertheless!

 

[Katie]

Can you just buy them or do you have to drink their coffee to get the mugs

In Moscow, the best coffee I could get was at Starbucks. It was ALL expensive (min. $AUD7 for a smallish cup). And in some non-Starbucks locations, you might get UHT/long-life milk in your latte. Just like in Fiji, but without the whole remote island thing going on. :shock:


Definitely a tea-drinking culture.

 

[tassie9]

I collection Christmas decorations which have the place name and preferably the year. Makes decorating my tree very special.

 

[Skyring]

Can you just buy them or do you have to drink their coffee to get the mugs :?: :shock:

The mugs - and bags of coffee and tumblers and other stuff - are usually located on a merchandise display in the main area of the shop near the orders counter. Not required to actually buy a drink of coffee to buy a mug, nor to buy both and drink the coffee from the other. Though if you do this, there's a small saving from supplying your own mug.

They make great souvenirs, though a trifle unwieldy and fragile to bring home. My last big trip through the USA I ended up shipping a big box home to myself and a few got broken. My Kansas City mug, minus the handle, serves as our toothbrush holder.

Great soup mugs. You really need two shots of espresso to fill them up with 20 oz of coffee, which makes for a serious jolt, but then again some folk, like my son and I, like that. Smaller sizes are sometimes available, and I've got a couple from Japan and off eBay which are rather more wieldy.

Sometimes the staff just hand them to you, sometimes they find a box, and in Japan they wrapped them in tissue paper, put them in a box, put that in a bag tied up with a ribbon, and then put that bag in a carrier bag! And bowed as they handed the whole parcel over!

Great for memories. My Kyoto mug has an exquisite design and I got it next door to a temple close to the main train station. In Tokyo, the more vibrant, abstract design was found in the Starbucks overlooking the crossing at Shinjuku.

I'm a big fan of Starbucks on the road. You know you're going to get good coffee. Not great coffee, but likely better than random, and in the USA the sort of muck they serve at roadhouses makes me wince. Even in Paris I'd head for Starbucks on the Blvd St Michel, because I could get coffee the way I liked it without struggling with the language and being ripped off.

There's also the free wifi and nobody's going to move you on if you nurse a coffee through the afternoon while you catch up with email and stuff.

I've got about fifty of the things now, and my wife, long suffering darling that she is, hasn't made the ultimatum yet. Lucky she's only short and I keep them up on the top shelves.

 

[Favfern]

I haven't had time to read all the posts in this thread, but may I say that when I was a QF Flight Steward back in the late Sixties, the main collectables were airline pins! Every airline in the world had one, and it was de riguer to wear as many as possible on the hat band of one's official Qantas cap. This, of course, was frowned upon by fussy old QF officialdom, so all stewards (from the Chief down to the Fifth) spent a great deal of time folding the sides of one's cap down as far as possible! This had a double benefit. Firstly, it made the the stewards look like they wore "over the head" headphones 24 hours a day and were all fighter pilots in their spare time, and secondly, it hid the bloody pins so some clown at Mascot Qantas de-briefing would not confiscate the lot! The best pin I ever got was after I left QF and was the tour leader for one of the earliest Australian group tours to Communist China in February 1978. The Chinese airline was called CACK Airlines (spelt CAAC), and if you think Aeroflot used be bad, you have never flown CACK! But they had a lovely airline pin, and somewhere in a jewellery box in the back of my wardrobe, it still exists! Sadly, back in 1969, at a drunken party in the joint QF/BA crewroom at the Lexington Hotel in New York, some miserable cough stole my QF cap and its dozens of associated pins. I reckon to this day, that it was a bloody Pom! Too damn lazy to collect his own!

 

[ditto]

We collect tumblers - not with a logo - something interesting design wise. My partner loves a big cup of tea and most hotels/apartments have regular tea cups and saucers (waste of a tea bag she thinks) so on our first day out we keep eyes peeled for something unusual. Last year in Paris we bought two tumblers in the shape of crushed throwaway plastic cups (like the Parisian cafes use for takeaway espresso) brought others home as gifts. We have a couple of huge tumblers purchased in New York that each hold the equivalent of two cups of tea. Serious tea drinkers us!

 

[Hermes]

The headline on the main page says "What travel momentous do you like to collect". The headlines that followed dropped the "u", so it was no longer a momentous misspelling. But even momentos is wrong. In this vast frequent flying forum, can no one spell mementoes?

 

[wallacej]

Back in the day when metal teaspoons were given out on board I would collect one from each airline, so long as it had the airline logo on it. Alas, I have not seen many these days. My collection remains at four

 

[blackcat20]

Back in the day when metal teaspoons were given out on board I would collect one from each airline, so long as it had the airline logo on it. Alas, I have not seen many these days. My collection remains at four

We've got some Ansett and Singapore Airlines cutlery at work...

 

[Bindibuys]

Shot glasses, current collection approx 96 of them. We randomly pick one each (usually with eyes closed) then we have to tell each other what we remember about the city/country it came from. Then throw back the shot of Schnapps to celebrate how lucky we are to be able to travel for leisure.

9 - 18ct yellow gold charms for my bracelet, representing that location. (try buying a 9ct Merlion in Singapore)

 

[Julesmac]

My brother's a Geologist, so tried to bring back a bottle of sand from Cuba. Quarantine were not impressed, but were prepared to have the bottle sent to Sydney for irradiation and sent back to Central Qld. He decided against it. Best stick to simple rocks - they are okay if they are clean.

I'm VERY proud to confess to bringing back several very big rocks from Pebble Beach, collected whilst MrJulesmac played a round there (his "pebble" was stuck in a drawer on return and to my certain knowledge has remained there since 1993). As a rabid non-golfer I thought it was a great effort; he presented one to each of his regular golf partners, to be used as paperweights. Carried in hand luggage, very hard to look casual and walk upright....

 

[anabolism]

I also collect small ginger jars and elephants ( ceramic or pottery - not the live sort !!)

Oh and shoes ......... I usually buy a pair of shoes (or 2 ) each trip.

We occasionally collect small elephant or (when in Sweden) dala horses . I try not to wear shoes, so don't often buy them

 

[Mgjdubs]

I like to collect boarding passes and luggage stickers. I've already got a plan for them (make a collage - nothing original), but I just need to collect a couple more.

Other than that I collect soft toys. There's no shame in a 21 year old collecting soft toys.

 

[anabolism]

Other than that I collect soft toys. There's no shame in a 21 year old collecting soft toys.

No, of course not. Nor even a 41- or 61- year old.

Come to think of it, we have quite a collection of Conrad bears from various places.

 

[blackcat20]

Other than that I collect soft toys. There's no shame in a 21 year old collecting soft toys.

I've got a couple from various places as well (late 20s)

 

[here2go]

Back in the day when metal teaspoons were given out on board I would collect one from each airline, so long as it had the airline logo on it. Alas, I have not seen many these days. My collection remains at four

On a school camp in the early 90's on Fraser Island, I stuck my hand into the sand, and what did I find - a Lufthansa Spork in good nick. I also have JAL, Ansett, Korean (don't know how) and BA.

 

[ozmille]

I have an idea what Drewbles collects, I may have brought one for him on one of my Trans Tasman travels, and no it wasn't women's underwear.

Men's underwear?

I used to collect shot glasses but that has stopped now and my collection is somewhere in a box in Europe. Now I try to keep my boarding passes and old FF cards to maybe make a collage once I have enough (I tell myself and SWMBO)

 

[Skyring]

Back in the day when metal teaspoons were given out on board I would collect one from each airline, so long as it had the airline logo on it. Alas, I have not seen many these days. My collection remains at four

Ansett-ANA, BOAC, Pan Am and TAA?

 

[Maca44]

I used to collect girl's phone numbers, but that was 30 years ago Then, after marriage, kids, and divorce I have nothing to collect with :shock:

 

[RWJ777]

I also have a collection of nice beer glasses, mostly liberated rather than purchased

You collect spectacles that render ugly people attractive??!!