Read When You Look Like Your Passport Photo, It's Time To Go Home for Free Online Page B

and missing fingers. I really began to worry about myself when I nudged my husband, nodded toward a statue of St. Cecelia, and said, “Be honest. Is that Lee Marvin's twin or what!”
    Eventually, it got to the point where it would have taken Robert Redford saying Mass to get me off the bus.
    As the death march progressed, other things began to bother me. My twelve-piece basic ensemble that could make a hundred thirty-five combinations was beginning to break down. The breast pocket on the jacket ripped and I could only wear it with my arms folded. A scarf faded on my only blouse, forcing me to wear it with the darts facing backwards. The T-shirt shrunk. I bought another cap with a bill and made an interesting bra to wear around the pool.
    I had outgrown my slacks in London ... or was it Rome?
    We were all getting testy. The moment my husband hit a hotel room, he unpacked like we had just closed on escrow for the building. Every suitcase was emptied into drawers and closets ... if only for a night. Then he began his laundry. The sun could be setting over the Matterhorn. A carnival could fill the streets of Florence. The Tour de France winner could be coming over the finish line outside our hotel window. He did his laundry.
    I was also sick of lugging around his stupid tripod. A perfect stranger approached me one day in Harrods, pointed to the permanent indentation on my jumpsuit, and said, “I see you travel with a tripod.”
    Probably the biggest downside to group tour travel is that for twenty-one days, sixteen hours a day, you are with other Americans. God forbid you should rub shoulders with an Austrian, German, Frenchman, Swiss, Italian, Irishman, Belgian, Englishman, or Dutchman. You wait in hotel lobbies with groups of other Americans waiting for their tour buses. You visit shrines where all the buses that unload are carrying other Americans. You eat with one another at long tables that cater to Americans and are sequestered in private dining rooms like juries.
    Guides tell you American jokes in English. You are dropped off at souvenir shops that sell T-shirts with the Chicago Bulls stamped on them. When you go to a circus or the theater, you are set off in a section reserved for American tourists. In three weeks, the closest we ever got to a foreigner was Lil's Irish dog.
    The bus rolled on and the twenty-first day found us gathered on the second terrace of the world-famous Eiffel Tower for the obligatory gala farewell party.
    I looked at this group of people whom I had seen more often than my mother and had more intimacy with than my gynecologist. We had shared some extraordinary moments together.
    We had dined in a castle at a medieval banquet in Ireland. (Ben Everywhere observed the Samoun Fumme was cold and Wortes-Sallet-Ton-Tressis was tougher than he remembered.)
    We had seen the Pope standing in his window waving from St. Peter's Square. (The Whiners said they didn't believe it was really him. They saw someone push a start button in his back.)
    Mary Jo and her mother had yodeled on stage at the Swiss Night Out party in Lucerne. We had been to the London Palladium and the Sistine Chapel.
    As we sipped the complimentary French wine, my husband started to butter his hard roll. Suddenly he jumped to his feet and dramatically hoisted the roll over his head like Kunta Kinte offering up his newborn son. “I knew it!” he shouted. “It's my roll from Dublin. Here are my initials and the date!”
    The Whiners said they weren't surprised.
    The Everywheres looked bored and told him to sit down.
    “Where's Mr. Babcock?” blinded him with his flash as he captured the moment on film.
    Mary Jo and her mother declared it a miracle.
    Mr. Murchison offered a toast and a fast chorus of “Mademoiselle from Armentieres, Parlez Vous.”
    The Health Fairy warned, “Don't eat it. It will make you gassy.”
    When we arrived home, I set fire to my travel clothes. To me, they had the same symbolism as maternity clothes. Get rid of