The Traveler's Prayer
(composed by Art Buchwald, undated)

Heavenly Father, look down on your humble, obedient tour servants who are doomed to travel this earth, taking photographs, mailing postcards, buying souvenirs, and walking around in drip-dry underwear.

Give us this day divine guidance in the selection of our hotels, that we may find our reservations honored, our rooms made up, and hot water running from the faucets.

We pray that the telephones work and the operators speak our tongue. Lead us, Lord, to good inexpensive restaurants where the food and waiters are superb, and the wine is included in the price.

 Give us the wisdom to tip correctly in currencies we do not understand. Forgive us for under-tipping out of ignorance and over-tipping out of fear.

Make the natives love us for what we are and not what we contribute to their worldly goods.

Grant us strength to visit the museums, the listed as "musts" in our guidebook, and if perchance we skip a historic monument to take a nap after lunch, have mercy on us for our flesh is weak.

Dear God, keep our wives from shopping sprees and protect them from "bargains" they can't afford or don't need. Lead them not into temptation for they know not what they do.

Almighty Father, keep our husbands from looking at foreign women and comparing them to us. Save them from making fools of themselves in cafes and nightclubs. Above all do not forgive them their trespasses for they know exactly what they do.

And when your journey is over and we return to our loved ones, grant us the favor of finding someone who will look at our pictures and listen to our stories, so our lives as tourists will not have been in vain.

Amen.