Binondo Church, Chinatown, Manila, 1902

What a wonderful gem of a photograph I found over at Flickr!

Flickr user Biketripper generously shares his grandfather's photos from his trips around the world from 1897-1903.

Below is a photo of the Pasig River from the same set: Each photo was scanned from the original glass plate negative, the quality of the snaps are amazing. Even more precious are the grandfather's diary entries during his stay in the Philippines on December 02-12, 1902. It's always nice to read about Old Manila, even more so from a visiting traveler's perspective. The entries are on the Binondo Church photo's comments page here, they're really worth reading.

Souvenirs

I love these clever photographs by Michael Hughes:

Read about the stories behind the pictures at his blog, http://michaelhughes.wordpress.com/.

See the rest of his Souvenirs set on Flickr.

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I like to collect items from my trips, little somethings that remind me of my visit. A big chunk of my collection is composed of the usual tourist trinkets--magnets, keychains, maps, and postcards (some of which I sent to myself)--but I've taken home bus tickets, admission tickets, boarding passes, pressed leaves and flowers, tins, table napkins, paper bags, even candy/chocolate wrappers. I'll keep anything that will remind me of my travel experiences. Even the pencils and tape measures from Ikea have earned a place in my "travel" box. Abet gave me a beautiful velvet-lined box last year where I store souvenirs from our trips together, I hope to fill it up with more items.

What do you take home as souvenirs?