The best souvenirs are free. This might sound like blasphemy coming from someone who runs a European antiques shopping tour company (whose very business is based upon tourists buying their memories), but it's been my experience that the best souvenirs from my travels around the globe are the ones I've picked up for free. Each January I meet 4 girlfriends in Florida for a reunion. We walk the beach scouring for shells which we bring to our respective home filling bowls, gluing onto picture frames (and even lamp shades) giving a beachy edge to our otherwise classically-styled homes. Once I was in Spain walking on a cliff overlooking the sea and happened upon a gigantic rubble pile of dilapidated mosaic walls - I scavenged the pile pulling a perfect chunk that now rests on my mantle. Another time, I scored a beautiful antique window frame when I dumpster-dived in Paris' Bastille. Advertisements for art shows handed to me while walking down the streets of Berlin, Vienna and Rome have been framed and hung in my hall while lava rocks picked up in the Greek isles line my bath to be used as decorative pumice stones. These "Found Art" pieces decorate my home, adding humility to some of the finer pieces of antiquity, revealing my eclectic side and bringing smiles to my lips at memories of adventures past. Look for "Found Art" wherever you go and whenever memories are being made.
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