About a month ago, RVtravel.com ran a poll question asking, “Do you collect refrigerator magnets when you travel?” At the time of writing, 48% of our readers buy them often or occasionally. I am part of that 48% and display them on my refrigerator in the RV. I choose refrigerator magnets because they are small and I can usually find ones from states and national parks we travel to. If I ever reach my dream of visiting every state and every national park, we will need to get a bigger refrigerator!
Souvenirs are not new to travel
Collecting souvenirs is not new, according to Thrillist. As far back as 980 B.C., Irish people who traveled to Scandinavia came back with amber beads. Religious pilgrims began collecting pilgrim badges in the 1400s. The badges helped prevent the pilgrims from defacing shrines and taking home a bit of the shrine.
Souvenirs really took off in the 1600s as more people started visiting Europe. The travelers brought bits of memories back home.
Today, people are still collecting souvenirs, whether for Aunt Mary, the kids and grandkids, or their own personal memory box. A souvenir can express a challenge conquered like a strenuous hike or bring back memories of a special place or occasion. Collections of similar souvenirs are popular too. Collections range from snow globes, shot glasses, dolls, ornaments, tiny flags, and right down to the lowly refrigerator magnet.
Weird and creepy souvenirs
But for those with a more exotic flare, there are some weird and downright creepy mementos to be had.
In Southeast Asia, you can get snakes in a bottle of whiskey as well as scorpions, cobras and centipedes. The whiskey is even served in restaurants.
Stuffed Cane Toads can be found in Queensland. They have an overabundance of them!
Alligator heads are all the rage in the southern United States.
Want more? In Prague, you can bring home Elephant Dung in a can, and canned air from both Prague and New York City.
Heartfelt souvenirs
I recently bought a pitcher from a couple that had brought it home from Italy. As the woman recounted the story of a delicious meal with her husband in a renowned Italian restaurant, her eyes got a misty, faraway look, and I knew she was reliving the memory. I passed the pitcher on to my sister, who had just returned from Italy, and she got that same misty look in her eyes.
Memories at our fingertips
As I scan the magnets stuck to our fridge, I remember every single trip. Nostalgia wins over and I wax sentimental about the White Tank Mountain Park, where we volunteered for five wonderful years, traveling the winding mountain road to Georgia O’Keeffe’s art studio, Big Bend and watching the donkeys cross from Mexico to the U.S., Mount Rainier in fog… We once got stuck on a bridge near Redwood National Park and took the last shuttle of the season at Glacier. All memories, and all good.
Key chains, miniature buildings, hats, mugs, postcards, and Christmas ornaments are just a few more of the mementos just waiting at the local gas station and souvenir shop.
May your souvenirs, whatever they may be, bring you fond memories too.
What else, if not magnets, do you collect on your travels? Do you have a favorite souvenir from a favorite memory? Please share it with me and other RVers in the comments below.
We buy tee shirts.
I do collect magnets but also, in lesser amounts, mugs. I have enough magnets I had to bring some in my home to put on the basement refrigerator.
As a former professional collector (i.e. Curator of Collections for the EAA museum in Oshkosh), I’ve limited my travel souvenirs to smaller items – patches, decals, magnets and whatever I can find in the way of challenge coins, medallions, or tokens. Then there’s all those brochures from places we’ve visited. So much for limits, eh?
I don’t own an RV yet but my goal is to have a digital picture frame that scrolls through our travels. I can take pictures of the magnets or state stickers so that I don’t have to keep any physical.
Daneen Mugs. In the mornings at home, we grab a couple of the rack, fill with coffee and see what memories we relish . “Problem” is we go to too many places to get one everywhere.
Cloth patches or stickers. 46 states, Canada and Mexico .
We have 5 scrap books full ! Maybe a quilt made with these patches is in our future. It also would make a nice hand me down.
Sewn patches that I place on a large bulletin board in my office. Been doing that since I was a kid. We also get magnets that stay in our trailer.
Thank you, Nanci! The pitcher reminded me of a wedding anniversary trip (20 years?) DW and I took that included the Amalfi Coast of Italy. Sorrenti is especially noted for lemons. I bought souvenier bottles of lemoncello for my colleagues at work. We also ordered several place settings of tableware with a lemon theme from a shop there. Generally, we do not buy souveniers for ourselves. Now that we’re retired neither do we buy them for former colleagues. We did buy a few when we RVed to Alaska in 2019 in RV #1. I expect more of the same when we return in RV #2.
Nanci, I didn’t collect this one as a magnet souvenier, but as a memory. During one of my many deployments to WestPac (as we call it in the Navy) I discovered this little after hours bar on the back alleys of the ‘Honch’ in Yokosuka, Japan. It had a unique sakē called Habu sakē. If you were the lucky winner drinking the bottom of the jar, you got to the very venomous snake that made habu sakē more powerful than any tequila or whiskey or moonshine that you could possibly have imbibed in. I never knew of anyone that had accomplished this feat.
Oh, our refrigerator is covered in magnets. By the way, we are fulltimers, home base in Pine River, MN where we moved to when I retired from the Navy.