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remember your bus number. It is 1084725. Keep your feet out of the aisles, do not smoke, do not leave valuables on the bus, keep the windows closed, have the correct change for the restrooms, do not bring food aboard, and remember, if you miss your bus, you must return to your hotel at your own expense. If you have a good time, you may tip as you leave.”
    Remembering your guide is also taxing. You cannot drift for a minute. Although Mr. Duval is our main guide, we pick up local ones to provide information on what we are seeing. The women guides usually carry umbrellas, plastic flowers, or brightly colored scarfs so we can follow them easily. Male guides try to lose us.
    Mr. Duval announces every evening that we must have our luggage outside our hotel doors by five a.m. Never at nine or ten, but at a time when we are asleep. Sometimes, as I drag it out into the hall, my husband's hand is still in his valise attached to clean underwear.
    This sounds ludicrous, but if it weren't for Mary Jo and her copious notes, no one would know what country we're in.
    As the bus slows down, the Whiners peer anxiously out of the window. “I knew it,” says Bud, “another factory. We didn't pay all of this money to come to a bunch of tourist traps.”
    I hated to admit it, but Bud had a point. Our sightseeing did seem to be a bit out of balance. We were allowed fifteen minutes to view the Book of Kells in Ireland and an hour and a half to shop in a sweater factory. We spent twenty minutes touring the Tower of London and two hours in an English bone china factory. We saw Anne Frank's house when the bus slowed down but spent half a day in Holland's Delft factory. Add to that the jewelry factory in Austria, the Murano glass factory in Italy, the lace factory in Belgium, and the watch factory in Switzerland, and we were pretty burned out.
    This was a wood carving factory. We all filed off the bus to Luigi's warning, “Remember, your bus number is 1084725. Take your time.”
    The factories are all the same. There is a small room the size of a coffee table where an artisan sits on a stool with the product in front of him. This craftsman was chipping away on a bust of Elvis. A guide quickly explains the process. Seconds later, we are herded through two double doors to a room the size of Connecticut. Every three feet along the rows of glass counters displaying hand-carved dogs and tableaus of the Crucifixion is a salesperson with an order book who speaks English like a Harvard professor.
    Having never traveled extensively before, I was surprised at how many cathedrals we could visit in one day. The first church we toured was truly a spiritual experience. As I shuffled down the aisle and gawked toward the ceiling, I clung hungrily to every word about the church that came from the guide's lips. Then when I could absorb no more, I wrote it all down in a notebook. I was desperate to know how long it took to build it, how many bricks were used, what year it was struck by lightning, when the east wing was added, the time it took to install the organ, how many trees were cut down to make the pews, how many men died cutting the trees, how many gallons of gold leaf were used on the ceiling alone, and how many miles of scaffolding were needed to restore it. I duly recorded what heads of state were buried from there and in what city the bells were cast. I think one day I actually pushed “Where's Mr. Babcock?” into a water font to get closer to the guide.
    After forty or fifty cathedrals, I began to glaze over and became quite preoccupied. When souvenir church bulletins were passed out in a basilica somewhere, I wrapped my gum in mine. Later, when the guide asked, “Any questions?” I asked how many cathedrals could you see in one day before you slipped into a coma.
    Near the end of the trip, St. Paul's began to look like St. John Lateran and Santa Maria Maggiore looked suspiciously like St. Mark's. I began noticing saints with bad skin, chipped noses,