Hello, we are travelling around Europe for a month and will most likely make lots of purchases. Anyone know the best way to get purchases home from Italy? Thank you!

Often - the best way is to have the merchants do it for you. They can take the VAT off the top since they are exporting the goods - and that will cover a big part of the shipping/insurance costs.

Hi t,

I agree with J.

You can try to find boxes, tape, bubble wrap, etc and ship it home yourself, but the Customs people have lots of rules, and if everything is not just so, your stuff can end up in a bonded warehouse and you will have to pay to get it released.

I always bring a large, empty nylon duffel bag with me when I travel. Dirty clothes go in the duffel, and souvenirs go in my suitcases.

I've also checked boxes as luggage (including wine in styrofoam packing). Family of 4 never uses up full free baggage allowance so there's always room to add one more checked item.

For 1mo you probably don't want to schlep extra bags or boxes with you so shipping from the merchant may be your best option.

Thank you for the information! Very helpful ;-)

We shipped things home three times from Italy. Here are my experiences: shipped home about $300 worth of pottery from Florence which the merchant packed and shipped for us. Don't remember how much she charged, but it was a not cheap. But everything arrived unbroken and within two weeks; bought a custom-made shearling coat in Florence which the Pellicceria(sp?) shipped to me. It wound up costing me almost 50% of the cost of the coat to pick it up at customs; and finally shipped home a Grappa set (the fancy glasses and bottle) from Florence which the merchant packed. It arrived mostly broken except the Grappa was still intact.
I guess my point is that unless it is something that you would never see here (presuming you are in the U.S.) or on the internet, I don't think it is worth the expense or the hassle.

It depends on just how much your planning to buy! I have sometimes shipped a box of dirty clothes, home just from the local post office, 1/2 way thru a trip, to make room in my suitcase (but then I don't buy an awful lot).

I agree with Angela. It's rarely worth the hassle and expense. You can find anything European these days on eBay or a specialty food/wine store.

We bought a chandelier for our dining room in Murano. It was one that we saw on a previous trip but thought we could order a similar from the US. I turned out that we could do that but at several times the price so we resolved to get it on our next trip which we did. They packed and shipped it at a fair price. It arrived in perfect condition. No hassle at all.

Hello traveljunkie, I have had merchandise shipped home via the merchant with success and I have had items shipped by the merchant which were received broken.

I have very successfully shipped home "dirty" clothes via the Italian post office as Suze has done. I paid for land shipment which was the cheapest and received the very large box in something like 60 days. I was in Italy when the weather went from very hot to rain and very cold so I needed to buy cold weather clothes and had no use for the hot weather clothes. Also that allowed me to pack the items I purchased in Italy either into my carryon or into my checkin luggage.

Personally I would send "dirty" clothes homes via the Italian Post Office and bring the purchases home with me unless you have some purchases that are not breakable. But that is just my experiences. Best wishes.

Loveitaly,

We are back from our trip. Thanks for the advice. We would have done exactly what you suggested regarding shipping back our old clothes. But we didn't need to as I didn't go crazy shopping during our trip. ;-)

We did ship wine back from a winery. It's currently on it's way via Fedex. Wonder how much I'll be dinged on customs and duty...yikes! It'll be worth it though. More wine for our cellar..;-)