With favourable weather and school holidays upon us, Travel Agents through the land are beginning to smile. We all need a holiday for rest and refreshment. Having my few days in Dublin, staying with Elly & George, visiting friends and family, can be tiring at times but I still return home refreshed with the promise to visit once more in the very near future.

Dublin has changed greatly in the years since I lived there. Sometimes I feel like a tourist visiting for the first time. This thought brought to mind a Prayer for Tourists:

Prayer for Tourists

Heavenly father, look down on us your humble servants who are doomed to travel this earth taking pictures, mailing cards, buying souvenirs and walking around in drip-dry underwear. We beseech you to see that our plane is not hijacked, our baggage not lost. Protect us from surly and mean taxi drivers, stingy porters and unlicensed English speaking guides.

Give us divine grace in selection of our hotels. Lead us dear Lord to good inexpensive restaurants where food is super and waiters friendly and wine included in the price of the meal.

Dear God, keep our wives from shopping sprees and protect them from bargains they didn’t need and can’t afford. Lead them not into temptation for they know not what they do. Keep our husbands from looking at foreign women and above all do not forgive them their trespasses for they know exactly what they do. When our trip is over grant us the favour of finding friends who will look at our photos and listen to our stories so that our lives as tourists will not have been in vain.

This we ask in the name of us all. Amen.