Cheap and tacky souvenir or valued family heirloom?

Being on holiday seems to have some remarkable restorative powers for me generally; I feel less stressed, a lot more relaxed, infinitely more engaged with my wife, myself and life in general and simply better in most ways. Sure, there's a little stress, you know, working out navigational issues or language barriers and the like, but typically I get it all done with a minimum of fuss, stress or worry leaving me feeling pretty good mostly.

We've recently finished a 4 week trip to some parts of England and one of those places was Bath, Somerset. Bath is famous for being a Roman Town, called Aquae Sulis some two thousand years ago and for it's natural spring that bubbles water out of the ground at a temperature of 46.5 degrees Celsius. The water takes around 10,000 years to get to the surface and picks up many minerals and such along the way so has long been purported to have healing qualities. I drank some you know, and also washed my hands in it...They have a spot within the Roman Bath's for just that purpose...What did it taste like? Hmm, not so good, that's what, however it made my hands soft and I can understand why the image-conscious Romans were so fond of their baths.

Anyway, invariably when one is on vacation visiting attractions like the Roman Bath's one is confronted with the gift shop as it's usually the only way to exit from the attraction. I was interested to see some of the items within the gift shop at the Roman Bath's and found many offering medicinal and well-being benefits such as the water pictured in this post. No, I didn't buy any. I did however purchase a book about the Bath's, Aquae Sulis and the Roman's themselves which I posted home to Australia with a bunch of other's.

Obviously these type of items are designed to raise revenue and are designed to prey on the good feelings the tourist are experiencing in the moment of walking through the tourist attraction; A ploy that certainly works a lot of the time. The benefit to the tourist is they can take an item home and display it as a reminder of their time in the tourist attraction or area. I had a funny thing occur a couple of weeks ago though relating to just that practice.

My wife has been calling home to her mum each week or so since we left and on one occasion was told that a relative had asked her to tell Faith (my wife) that his wife wanted us to purchase her one of those snow dome souvenir's from England because she collects them...

Now, I get the fact people collect them, but doesn't that happen because the collector has actually BEEN TO THE PLACE? I thought so, but apparently that's not the case. Seemingly one can gain a lot of satisfaction from a cheap plastic souvenir from the other side of the world despite having the enjoyment of being there oneself! OK, now I just don't get it...Anyway, because we are nice people, (seriously, despite what your uninitiated judgement of us may be via steemit, we are actually lovely people) we went out of our way to get a bloody snow dome souvenir for this lady and have carted it around for the last week or so. We ended up buying it in Oxford, England but got a reasonably generic and non-location-specific one so the recipient can make up whatever story she would like to about how she came to own it. You can see it pictured here.

I'm not sure what enjoyment she will get from it however It's not for me to judge I guess. I mean if she wants to have the snow dome thing around as a memento of that time she didn't go to England on holiday who am I to judge? I guess the snow dome souvenir will remind her of all those great times they didn't have when in England, or that time someone else went there instead of her...Hmm, just doesn't make sense.

What does make sense though is that I decided to take the time to pick up this item for a person who may never have the opportunity or ability to take a trip such as the one I am on now. I know the lady reasonably well and of course Faith's relative who she is married to and they are indeed very nice people. I wish, for their sake, that they have the chance to experience travelling to places I have and experiencing for themselves what I have over all the world...But if not, then I hope the snow dome brings her some satisfaction and enjoyment. It took me no time at all to get and only a very small 5 pound outlay ($10 in Aussie money) which I am sure they will offer to my wife when they pick up their souvenir. Yes, I don't understand the desire for them to have it however am glad to be able to satisfy the need for it and to help out some really nice people in this small way.