Excellent Adventure 2012: The Loot

For those who are not aware - I've been collecting elephants for over 30 years. Mostly because elephants are my favorite critter (after dogs) - so smart, so cute, and so amazingly......large. I have something over 400 elephants. I've long since stopped counting.

And it adds something special to shopping on our travels. A bit of a challenge some times.

Here's this year's Elephant Walk:

Andy found this elephant in the first souvenir shop on St Petersburg Day 1. I may have somewhere an enamel elephant that opens (like this one), but not one from Russia:

Of course, since the nesting Matruska dolls are the iconic Russian "thing", I had to have an elephant Matruska doll. Once again Andy struck gold on St Petersburg Day 2 after our visit to The Hermitage:

After our visit to Catherine's Palace, we found this amber elephant at a street vendor. We were pleasantly surprised at the very low price, especially for amber. There are, in fact, bugs embedded in  there:

The next elephant popped up at a Chinese market in Hamburg. No clue as to whether or not this thing has a function (it opens up), but the colors are great:

This elephant we bought at the open air market in Helsinki directly from the artist. She told us that the ceramic technique she used to create the shimmery colors was called Rukka (thanks to Robin, my resident ceramics expert, for the spelling). All the elephants had hippie flowers on their heads. Other elephants had better flowers, but I liked this one because it looks like it's flapping its ears:

At the flower market in Amsterdam, I found this elephant mug. I need another elephant mug like I need another hole in my head, but it was too cute to pass up:

Bringing up the rear of the Elephant Walk, is this Delft one we found at the flea market - for only 7 euro! 

 We did find other non-elephant things we liked.

Our first matrushka doll was a freebie when we bought the first elephant:

We didn't do well with finding Judaica stuff in general. These items we found at the "Russian bazzar" on board ship on Friday night. Etched glass eggs and lacquered boxes are typical Russian items, though the high-end lacquered boxes were mini-works of art and extremely expensive:

We really liked the artistry of the high-end matrushka dolls - they were hand painted, enameled and signed by the artist. Of course we tried (in vain) to find one with a Jewish theme, so we settled for this one - the biggest doll is holding a loaf of bread with salt. Our Russian tour guide told us this was a very Russian theme. It also happens to be a Jewish theme, but we didn't bother to mention that. The second doll holds a tea pot, the next holds a bowl of soup (probably borscht by the color), followed by a cup of (maybe tea?). The tiniest doll is holding a circular thing - I'm convinced it's a bagel. Of COURSE it's a bagel!!

See for yourself:

See, she's holding a BAGEL!

These two pieces we found at the flea market. 

A draw bridge over a canal:

A reproduction of Van Gogh's "Sunflowers":

Last, but not least, is this cool Delft vase we found in a museum shop:

And there you have it: the Sheldons effort to support the global economy.