
Who knows why we buy what we buy when we travel.
An even greater mystery is why we keep what we buy.
Many ago my husband went to Mexico for out 25th anniversary. One of the worst parts of the trip was a visit to an island which our travel agent had arranged with the insistence that we shouldn’t miss the experience. Ugh!
It was the worst of Mexico. An island without sanitation

as we discovered when we walked away from the tourist restaurants on the beach. When, by default, we returned to one of those overpriced places with limited menus of scary stuff…the vendors were like flies. They came in swarms and refused to be brushed aside.
Because we were trapped on the island by the limited transportation, we began to entertain ourselves with my husband’s Polaroid camera. (I told you it was a long time ago.)
When he took a photo of a vendor, he was immediately surrounded by people wanting to trade their wares for a photo. To shorten the story, we ran out of film and ended up with a strange pottery bell.

For some reason this came to represent our 25th anniversary instead of a bad travel experience.
Years later in my trips to Greece I was captivated by worry beads and the eyes that were represented every to ward off evil. The men sat in coffee shops twiddling their beads. So romantic. Of course, when I went with my sister, the artist, she located gorgeous beads in a shop that were never intended to be slung through the fingers of a man trying to keep his hands from devil’s work. They were intended to be displayed artfully on a coffee table next to a book of Greek Islands.

Being a cheapskate a frugal person, I tried to recreate the romantic concept
and the artistic design of the beads in the shop without spending so much money. Not very successfully, I may add.

On a business trip to New Orleans I craved two things: Voodoo dolls and muffaletta sandwiches. I got two of each.
Trouble is the voodoo dolls aren’t meant to last (although longer than the muffalettas).
I can’t say that the Goddess didn’t do her job. But it’s time for her to leave our home (with the rest of these travel items).
They will all join the relics of the past.
xxoo
Haha. Gorgeous! 😀 Sorry to hear that the Mixico trip didn’t turn out so well … But what did you do with the voodoo dolls? 😀
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Oh, well. They are all relics of the long past. I still have one of the dolls some where (the Love Goddess), but the other one lost her head and is trashed:)
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I was never one for buying mementos during my travels though my late wife was. The house is still full of things that she picked up from various places. I resent having to carry extra weight while traveling and hence would even return home to locally buy what people wanted me to bring from overseas at a higher cost!
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I am probably more like your wife. When I see items I love at home, it make me want to follow them to their source and to bring a bit of that culture home with me.
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