Goblins in Europe!

This January I hopped over the pond for the first time ever and took a lovely two week vacation to Europe with my husband. Before this trip I had only really traveled around the US, I had certainly never left the continent before. We spent about 4 days each in London, Paris and Rome. It was so exciting to see all the places I learned about as a child, like the Tower of London (So awesome, by the way) and the Coliseum. I had an amazing time. We saw castles and towers and snow falling on the Eiffel Tower. Beautiful.

I gotta be honest with you folks, I am not an “endurance” kind of gal. High energy short bursts? Can do. Two weeks of walking, hiking, climbing and six story castles? Not so much. By the last day I was pretty much in tears when my husband said “Hey let’s climb to the top of that castle!” (Literally the very top.) We walked everywhere, to monuments, to the subway, to dinner most nights. Of course it was also winter in Europe, so the weather was just fantastic. *voice drips with sarcasm* Most of our trip either rain snowed or hailed (suddenly and violently) on our heads as we walked the streets.

Of course it was on such rainy, blustery days of walking that we discovered them, the European geek stores. Not just one nestled away in some corner, but many! There were comic book shops, game shops, fantasy shops. They frequented corners and marketplaces in much greater numbers than I had ever seen in a single city in the US. The best part, most of them, well they had Goblins, pixies trolls and more! Needless to say I then proceeded to spend a far amount of my “walking around” money to increase my personal collection. 

 

This Goblin warrior came from a shop in Paris called “Jeux Decartes”. It was mostly a game store, but also had a collection of figurines that caught my eye from the window display. The first day we went the store was closed, so we hunted it down later when we had a little free time. http://www.jeux-descartes.fr/

The second shop was this cool collectible shop. I did actually prevent myself from spending any money at this one, but thoroughly enjoyed wasting some time wandering about the shop marveling at their shinies.

The last shop we came across was in Rome. It was called Storia Magia. We found it when were heading towards the Vatican. The weather, as usual, was awful. It was cold and alternating between rain and pelting us with frozen chunks of ice. In fact, my husband actually fell on some stairs outside of the Vatican, it was so slippery. But I digress. We were walking along the street when we noticed a life sized wizard statue pointing into a little plaza of shops. Naturally we followed the wizard to the store.

http://www.storiaemagia.com/

It was very cool. It was a mixture of so many things. They had replicas and models for basically every major Fantasy genre fandom, swords, décor etc. They even had a section of beautiful quills and nibs for calligraphy, globes and an astrolabe. The back room, though, was my favorite. It was a room filled with nothing but goblins, trolls and fairies. They had a several foot tall troll end table by NYform trolls. (I didn’t dare even look at the price.) I fell in love with the NYform Trolls. They are Norwegian, and they look just like the trolls in the Finish Moomintroll books my Dad used to read to me. As my dad used to say they're "So ugly they're cute!" (He loved my 90's treasure trolls.)

So I ponied up the dough and got these guys! I love them! I also got this adorable little pixie made by “Le Alps.” (Seen below troll)

Fun fact: People in Rome do NOT like you to touch their merchandise. You know how your mom always used to tell you “Look with your eyes, not with your hands”? It was literally posted in ever shop on every shelf. This store was no exception. DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING. I even got in trouble for rotating the price tag so I could read it. Oops. Later we went to a toy store, where the shelves filled with the plastic toys and figurines. A employee yelled at a kid for touching a plastic toy. Now I understood to some extent in the other store, lots of breakables. But a toy store? Definite culture shock. Not that I ran around playing with the stuff in stores as a kid, but they took it seriously!

It was a ton of fun wandering Europe, and it definitely gave me the traveling bug and I can't wait to go on more adventures in new places! Seeing all the sites and history from my books was amazing and it would be awesome to add fantasy art and goblins to my collection from all over the world. Well that's all for todays ramblings! Thanks everyone for reading and sharing in my adventure. And remember, do watch out for your sock drawer Goblins are about!

~ By GoblinGal


#Goblin # Faeries #Europe