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

in a Colombian jungle as well as outfits for snorkeling, safaris, high teas, low ceilings; clothes for lounging and clothes to leave behind as tips.
    He has an iron that weighs thirteen ounces and folds into the size of a ballpoint pen, a hair dryer, and a global clock that tells you the time where you're not. (He will never have the right voltage to use any of these items.)
    He has a personal coffeepot, cassette player, and gym bag full of language cassettes. He carries Tom Clancy's latest eight-hundred-page hardcover novel, a pair of binoculars, a calculator that figures out what the U.S. dollar translates to, lead-laminated pouches to protect his film, a Swiss army knife, and several rolls of toilet tissue. He covers each of his shoes in a little bag as if he is gift-wrapping it.
    Off to one side is his food stash. These are little boxes and packets in separate bags that he clings to like diplomatic pouches that he never lets out of his sight. There's a supply of granola, crackers, dried soups, fruits, beef jerky, snacks, and candy bars. I don't know how to tell him London is not a third-world city.
    I, on the other hand, have benefited from the advice of Sylvia Suitcase (probably not her real name), a packing expert who appeared one day on Sally Jessy Raphael. Sylvia said if you really planned carefully you could make one hundred and thirty-five combinations out of a twelve-piece wardrobe and be well-dressed for three weeks.
    Stacked neatly on my bed is my ensemble: a basic dress, reversible skirt, slacks, blouse, jacket, shorts, T-shirt, vest, two scarves, cap with a bill, and jumpsuit for airline travel, plus underwear and a few toiletries.
    When my husband's luggage is stacked by the door it will look like the road company of Les Miserables. Just before I zipped my single overnighter suitcase, he said to me, “By the way, do you have room for my tripod?” For those of you who think pictures grow on postcards, I will explain that a tripod is a three-legged stand that supports a camera so it will remain perfectly still. When fully extended, a tripod will stand waist-high and weigh in at two or three pounds.
    Men with tripods will tell you how they were able to capture a hummingbird with crossed eyes or a cloud over the Kremlin that looked like the ghost of Billy Crystal, but they won't tell you their tripod was in their room at the time.
    “What do you need a tripod for?” I ask patiently.
    “Just in case I want to keep my camera steady while I take a spectacular shot of the Alps or something.”
    “You borrowed an Instamatic camera from my father that fits in your shirt pocket. What's to steady?” I ask.
    I know better than to argue. I jam the tripod on top of my twelve-piece basic ensemble that can make one hundred and thirty-five combinations and keep me well-dressed for three weeks.
    I snap my suitcase shut, lock it, and sit down on the bed to wait.
    We are scheduled to leave for Europe in two weeks.
     
     
     
     
     
    Twenty-One-Day
    European Getaway
     
    I said it was our ninth country and our fourteenth continental breakfast. My husband said I was wrong. It was our fifth country and our twelfth continental breakfast.
    I waved the itinerary under his nose as our bus sped along the autobahn in Germany. We had been snapping at one another since Amsterdam—or was it Austria?— and we didn't know why. I blamed our surliness on the continental breakfasts. There was no doubt in my mind that it caused mood swings and possible genetic side effects. Since day one, the morning meal had not varied once. It consisted of a paper napkin, a knife, a fork and spoon for which we had no use, a cup and saucer, canned fruit juice, a pot of coffee or tea, and a container of marmalade. There was, of course, the proverbial hard roll.
    For the first few days of our nine-country, twenty-one-day European Getaway, there were smiles from the group when the continental breakfasts were put before them. Women pinched their waists and