It shows a New York City yellow cab and, what might not be easily seen in the picture below is the fact that it's actually a 3D piece of art, built up of 4 layers of cardboard and plastic, with spacers in between.
(Excuse the extreme reflection!)
Probably unsurprisingly, we bought this in New York City. For our honeymoon, we spent a week on Cape Cod, and 3 nights in my favorite city - New York. We had been there together on our world trip in 2009, and I had been several times before that, so we had done all the main 'touristy' bits then. We used the 3 nights to visit some of our (my) favorite places and do a bit of shopping. While walking down 5th Avenue one of those days, we saw an art store with huge pieces of artwork which caught Simon's eye. On closer inspection, we saw that these huge pictures were actually 3D, built up over many layers to give an amazing effect. The pictures in the window depicted New York's skyline, huge fairs and many more. Simon wanted to go in, but I wasn't bothered, so we didn't.
Walking back down 5th Avenue later that same day, he asked again if we could go in, and I agreed. Inside were some of the most impressive pieces of art we'd seen - all built up in the same 3D way: layers and layers of the same parts of picture built over one another to give amazing effects.
We wanted one, but nearly fainted when we caught sight of the price tags on any of them. After a wander round the shop we saw our little NYC cab, but were pretty horrified to see it was priced at $450! We did ask the guy if he could do us a deal, and he dropped down (eventually) to $200. We hmm-ed and ahh-ed, to which he scared the life out of us by PUNCHING the glass in the frame! We both expected shards everywhere, but his point had been they use 'break proof' glass, so it would travel back well, and it was worth $200.
Enjoying the NYC portion of our honeymoon
Simon and I are pretty cheap, and we told him that was still a bit much for us, and started to leave...only for him to drop it again to $150. Even at that price, we deliberated, but decided that we really loved the whole 3D art idea, and it would be lovely to have this as a memento of our honeymoon. We handed over the money, and it was packaged up with a little handle tied on, which is one of the cleverest packagings I have ever seen! Unlike previous NYC souvenirs, we actually remembered to bring this one home, and it now hangs in our living room, lovingly dusted at least once a week.
Have you any special mementos of holidays, or your honeymoon? Or anything with a special story behind it in your home?
(PS, try as I might, I cannot find a link to the shop we got this from. Never mind that it was two years ago, but there is nothing on the frame to identify it!)