Souvenirs can run the gamut from expensive to cheap, tacky to really cool. But they also take up space in the suitcase.
Florence is a place that has wonderful souvenirs – leather jackets from the market, jewelry from the Ponte Vecchio, art books from the Uffizi, napkins with cafe logos, and then of course, your own photographs.
My favorite souvenirs are postcards. They are inexpensive, they pack well, and I can pick and choose the images I bring home, rather than lugging books around.
What are some of your favorite souvenirs from Tuscany that you bought and brought home with you?
Midway on the journey of my life, I carried three stones through the dark woods. One for Inferno, a second for Purgatorio, and a third for Paradiso. Together, these are my favorite souvenir of Tuscany. The truth is somewhere along that wooded trail I crossed into neighboring, Emilia–Romagna, but where exactly I cannot say. I can’t help from thinking of these stones as Tuscan. The trail began in Tuscany, Dante was Tuscan, and I think these woods are his, My hike began in the hillsides just above the Tuscan Village of San Godenzo. We don’t have many places and dates upon which we can pin Dante’s whereabout in the those years. We do know Dante stopped in San Godenzo on June 8, 1302 to attend a meeting in the Church where he and others plotted the overthrow of the regime in Florence that had exiled him on trumped up corruption charges. Nothing came of it. Dante never returned to Florence. A trail still leads off into the woods, and later comes out at San Bennedetto in Alpe. Midway a stream tumbles over the rocks of the Aquachetta waterfall. I think he was here too. He mentions the waterfall in the Inferno. I wanted feel closer to him by entering these woods. This is why I pocketed those three stones from the stream bed.
ps
It’s not my favorite souvenir because it shames me some to be reminded that I took it. What can I say? That day in Tuscany I was a thoughtless teenager traveling and camping with a backpack, and it was the 70s. I saw it. I liked it. I even needed it.
It’s a flattened roll of toilet paper. Each sheet has “Ferrovia dello Stato” printed on it. It’s from a train bound for Firenze, Stazione Santa Maria Novella.
Should I return it?
Not too different from saving napkins with the graphic logos on them from Florentine cafes!