The best souvenirs you can eat

When I go on holiday, I mostly take back magnets or little mementos of the places I’ve visited, like a piece of the Berlin Wall. My parents, on the other hand, love an edible souvenir. Be it crisps, chocolates, or sweets, I can be sure that they will pick up a snack or two from the places we visit. 

My favourite edible souvenir that my parents get is probably the crisps. There is just something about getting different flavours you can’t get in the UK and trying them back home. Of course, there are the common European brands like Lays or Cheetos that are nice, but nothing really special. The ones I like the most are the different flavoured Pringles. One of the flavours that I have not tried but really want to try is the ‘Everything Bagel’ flavour. Available in the USA, this flavour is inspired by the popular bagel topping, which is a mix of seeds and dried seasonings like garlic and onion. I don’t know if Americans do the same when they visit the UK and buy UK-exclusive flavoured Pringles like Prawn Cocktail or Smoky Bacon – I’m assuming they must do.

So next time you go on your holidays and are feeling a bit peckish, head into a local store and see if you can find some niche Pringle flavour you can’t get back home

Some of the rarer flavours of Pringles that you may be interested in trying to find are ‘Eggs Benedict’ flavour (found in Japan), ‘Hot Diggity Dog’ flavour (found only in Walgreens stores in the USA) and probably the hardest to try at the moment, ‘Crab’ flavour (only available in Russia). When researching this, I also found that in Japan Pringles offer a soup! So next time you go on your holidays and are feeling a bit peckish, head into a local store and see if you can find some niche Pringle flavour you can’t get back home. 

Of course, we aren’t all crisp people and some of us may prefer sweets. I am also rather partial to sweets every now and again, especially hard-boiled ones.  The best sweets I ever got abroad were from Skagen in Denmark. I went to a sweet shop called Bolcheriet. Here, they made hard boiled sweets, known as bolcher, right in front of you whilst you were shopping. We bought about a dozen sweets, all different flavours, and spent the remainder of our holiday trying to eat through them. The sweets varied in flavour from banana flavour to eucalyptus flavour and even coconut! These will sure prove a hit to anybody with a sweet tooth. Of course, there are loads of countries all over the world that are famous for their sweets, so you could pick up unique ones during your travels in most destinations. A few examples of famous sweets that can be found in countries include Turkey (known for Turkish delights) and India (known for its Mysores, a fudge like sweet).  

But whatever you buy on your travels, try to get something you can’t find back home and prepare to let your tastebuds be tantalised

Another edible souvenir you could easily collect is chocolate. I sometimes collect chocolate souvenirs; for example, I sometimes collect bars of chocolate with a city’s main tourist attractions etched into them. But you could also take your chocolate souvenirs down a different route and collect chocolates unique to the country you are visiting. This could mean collected Hershey’s or Butterfinger’s in the USA and Haigh’s Chocolates from Australia. Of course, if visiting destinations in Switzerland (the home of chocolate), it would be criminal to leave without a chocolate souvenir! I also strongly believe Cadbury’s is one of the best chocolate brands and would definitely not want to trade it for any other brands, especially not Hershey’s. But when you are abroad and want to try something new, maybe a different chocolate bar could work for you! 

So, when you are next travelling abroad, hopefully you might try and buy a non-traditional souvenir. Maybe you might search for a weird flavour of crisps you would like to try or search for a new brand of chocolate or sweet that could become your new favourite! But whatever you buy on your travels, try to get something you can’t find back home and prepare to let your tastebuds be tantalised.