Mistake #8: Buying useless souvenirs

First, a disclaimer: We aren't discouraging the purchase of silly or impractical souvenirs per se. After all, there was hardly anything useful about the cheap miniature gondolier's hat that we bought our dog Maggie, except for its value as a photo prop in our Maggie in Venice blog.

What we are discouraging is the purchase of souvenirs that fall into these two categories:

• Overpriced souvenirs that will be shoved into a closet and forgotten when you get home, and...

• Souvenirs that will never make it home because they're difficult or impossible to pack.

In the first category, one notorious example is the ubiquitous (but non-Venetian) jester's hat. Stuffed multipronged fleece caps with bells or tassles may irresistible to young sports fans and tourists, but how many buyers will wear such hats when they're back in Buffalo, Bristol, or Brisbane?

In the second category, we include carnival masks with long beaks, Murano glass objects that are much larger than a necklace, and other souvenirs that are likely to get squashed, broken, or left behind in a fit of buyer's remorse.

Our advice: Buy souvenirs that you can easily take with you, and that you'll continue to enjoy when your Venice trip is just a memory. We're partial to books, maps, small objects and jewelry of Murano glass, refrigerator magnets, and non-electric household items, but your tastes and budget may be more ambitious than ours. (If you have €30,000 or more to spare, a gondola might be a nice purchase--or, better yet, spend 800 to 900 euros on a forcola or Venetian oarlock, which you can put on your canoe to impress your neighbors on Lake Wobegone.)