Heavenly Father, look down on us, your humble, obedient, tourist servants, who are doomed to travel this earth, taking photographs and videos, mailing postcards and e-mailing shopping expedition stories to uninterested friends, buying souvenirs and walking around in drip-dry underwear. We beseech you, O Lord, to see that our plane is not hijacked, our luggage is not lost and that our overweight baggage goes unnoticed.
Give us this day divine guidance in our selection of hotels. We pray that the phones work, and that the operators speak our tongue, that there is mobile phone connectivity wherever we go, and that there are no letters and sms messages from our children which would force us to cancel the rest of our trip.
Lead us to good, inexpensive restaurants, where the wine is included in the price of the meal. Give us the wisdom to tip correctly in currencies we do not understand. Make the natives love us for what we are and not what we can contribute to their worldly goods.
Grant us the strength to visit the museums, the cathedrals, the palaces, 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, protect our wives from "bargains" they don't need or can't afford. 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 nightclubs. Above all, please do not forgive them their trespasses for they know exactly what they do.
And when our voyage is over, grant us the favour of finding someone who will look at our home movies and photographs, and listen to our stories, so that our lives as tourists will not have been in vain.
Amen.
