During our first trip around Europe, we wanted to buy every souvenir that we came across but we are thrifty people and also travel lightly so didn’t have room to bring back every treasure we wanted so we made a choice, right there in the middle of Paris: We would buy a painting each place we visited.
And we did and now we have an amazing art collection and reminder of all the wonderful time we spent traveling with our family.
That first piece we bought in Paris, we got at a little art shop and paid way too much for such a tiny painting!
We then learned it was better to try to buy on the street directly from the artist and this is what we did many places including in Madrid, Prague, Warsaw, Nuremberg and Rome where we actually got to meet and talk with the artists.
We are also very proud of the fact that almost all of our works are original, the only exceptions are Vienna (which we bought at the Marriott giftshop), Oslo (where the originals were outrageously expensive just like everything else) and Liverpool (where we were unable to find street artists).
I think we got a piece from pretty much every place we visited except London (we had other things on our minds, I was 37 weeks pregnant after all!)
Of course, we didn’t just get paintings and did pick up a few trinkets and souvenirs along the way though we tried to stick with traditional type items or those that reminded us of the place, not the cheesy t-shirts, magnets or shot glasses!
