You know the signs. The Instagram Stories were relentless. The WhatsApp messages were exclusively in Italian food emojis. They've been back three days and they've already told you about the carbonara twice. Someone who has just come back from Italy is experiencing a very specific kind of grief — the grief of a perfect trip that's over — and the best gift you can give them right now is something that makes it feel like it hasn't quite ended.
A Watercolour Print of Where They Went
The single best gift for someone who has just come back from Italy is a print of the specific place they visited. Not Italy in general — the actual town, coast or city they fell in love with. It goes on their wall and every morning they see it, they're back there for a second. The feeling of a great trip is exactly what a destination print preserves.
At Sundays In Tuscany we make watercolour prints of the Italian places people love most: Tuscany, Positano, the Amalfi Coast, Florence, Rome, Lake Como, Venice, the Cinque Terre and more. Each print is made to order on premium fine art paper — A4 from £17.99, A3 from £36.99. Free UK shipping.
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An Italian Cookbook to Recreate What They Ate
One of the most painful things about coming home from Italy is that the food immediately gets worse. The coffee is never quite right. The pasta tastes different. The simplest gift is a cookbook that helps them recreate what they ate — Marcella Hazan's
Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking for the purists, or a region-specific cookbook if they went somewhere particular (a Sicilian cookbook for someone who went to Sicily, a Roman cookbook for someone who did Rome).
Italian Coffee to Replace What They're Missing
The coffee is always the hardest thing to come home to. A Bialetti Moka pot paired with a bag of proper Italian ground coffee — Illy, Lavazza, or something from a small Italian roaster — won't fix the British weather but it will fix the mornings. It's the most practical gift on this list and the one they'll use every single day.
A Journal to Record It Before They Forget
The specific details of a great trip fade faster than you'd think. The name of the restaurant, the street they wandered down by accident, the view from the room. A beautiful journal — ideally leather-bound, with their name or the destination embossed — gives them somewhere to write it down before it blurs. Papier and Artifact Uprising both make lovely versions.
A Gallery Wall Starter
If they've now been to more than one Italian destination — which is almost everyone who's fallen for Italy — the real gift is the beginning of a gallery wall. Tuscany and Positano and Rome together on a wall tell a story about someone who loves this country and keeps coming back. That wall grows with every trip. That's a gift that lasts years.
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