My son will be staying with a family for a week this Fall, in Amsterdam. Can anyone suggest a host gift he can take with him? He is going to have carry on luggage only, so it needs to be relatively small. Thank you in advance, for any tips.

Perhaps one of your local bookstores carries a book of photos of your town or area?

Don't buy an exercise CD as a gift. People will think that you think they are fat and need to move more. This gift would be offensive.

Just for the sake of those who think FainaAgain's post is puzzling. . .
her post referred to a post just before it which advertised a travel CD. The editors happily removed the advertising post, but left Faina's comment.

Is there anything regional that would be a big hit? I'm from Texas and many friends have gotten big laughs over some of the names of hot sauce I've taken as gifts.

Dear patrick, thanks for the explaining, I read Faina's post and thought, what????? LOL. I hate it when Fodor's deletes a post but not the posts responding to it. Confusing, to say the least.

danen, if your area has something in the line of arts and crafts, that would be good also. Trying to figure out a gift is always so dificult. Best wishes.

danen5

I think a 2006 Calendar with perhaps local pictures of where you live or with USA views would be very welcome. This gift is light and will not take up much room in his carry on luggage.

Sandy

ttt

Any kind of little food item that is a specialty of your part of the world. As a kid we had realtives in Quebec who used to bring us little maple leaves shaped from Maple Sugar. Friends from Florida bring me those intensly flavoured lime cookies dusted in icing sugar. Litle things like that are light and usually easy to squeeze in luggage.

creamy Jif peanut butter and an assortment of ziplock baggies
paper plates

When I travel I always try to bring home kitchen towels representing the area. Later when I am using the towel I am reminded of the visit. Your son could reverse this and take tea towels to his hosts which represent your area.

danen,
here are two ideas. I like to take something regional but especially if it's something that can be compared to a similar item where I'm travelling. For example, our friends who live in wine country in California are always interested in trying whatever is new in wine here. We often take ice wine because it's unique to Ontario (at least, I think it is).
OR
If this is a family that regularly hosts visitors from other places, you could send an attractive blank-page journal where visitors can write their impressions of their visit and ideas for the next person. A house we once rented had such a journal and we found it helpful to read and nice to write in as well. We recently bought a beautiful leather one for our hosts in Italy and I printed and pasted a nice quotation about hosts/guests on the flyleaf. They seemed quite pleased with it because they had one for their own apartment but not for the apartment they rented out.