It's so interesting to see the price differences on certain items between the UK/Europe and the USA. The USA is rife with great stuff that's pretty cheap - yet the UK has such great prices on books, antiquities and unique artifacts. Items found in an antiquarian bookstore in the USA would cost no less than double, and usually triple than what I easily find in the UK. Global Gifts is one of my favourite stores in the USA because it sells unique items made from the countries, and the money goes back to those people. However, the UK's Fair Trade programme totally crushes Global Gifts in coolness and price.
I say all this to say that I got myself into a small peck of trouble. The 1866 engravings I bought for a song will be easy to pack because they are flat. Unfortunately though, my brain somehow justified the purchase of an Iranian tile that is quite heavy, and my brain simply went into a coma before purchasing a lovely carved Pakistanian wooden box. It is not gigantic, but the heavy and thick 12x6x6 box isn't exactly a 'toss in the luggage' kind of thing. I was quite proud to only bring my Kindle for reading, but totally failed on refraining purchase of books here. Even with the limitations of 'only printed in Britain' and 'something truly unique', I have a serious problem in that area too. We're not even going to go down the acquisition of awesome new clothes topic. I was reasonable with the amount of things I bought for Elle because there are cool toddler things everywhere, but I did find a couple really unique items that I of course couldn't pass up.
I am very happy to have thought ahead on some level and brought two essentially empty carry-on bags for the return trip, and ensured that one suitcase would be 1/2 empty, but I still am facing a challenge.
Postive note: I got some really cool shit!
