Museums

Last Thursday all T.Y.'s went into Dublin to visit the national museum, national library & national gallery. While on the bus, everybody got rather excited after sighting a group of foreign exchange students waiting at the traffic lights. After waving frantically, demanding a response, they finally smiled back...looking quite confused. They either went home with the notion that all Irish people were surprisingly friendly, or just completely insane :) We split up into two groups at the gates (Emnet & Amina) and we went into the national museum, while the rest went into the national library. After making our way through the ages...starting with the stone age, moving into the Mesolithic period & onto the bronze age...we were given the opportunity to look at some "bog bodies." These were bodies which were thousands of years old, perfectly preserved deep within the bog. It was amazing to see how realistic they were...you could see fingernails, ears and even their hair was fully visible, although it was died a rustic red colour due to the length of time it was buried within the bog. Some people found the bodies quite disturbing and didn't want to look, but I thought they were fascinating, definitely my favourite part of the tour! I'd recommend anyone to visit the museum, even to just to see the bodies :) Next we moved onto the national library to look around the Yeats museum. Although it was really interesting to find out about his life and personal problems...I had been to the same exhibition a couple of times prior and so it wasn't as exciting as the bog bodies. I would suggest going though if you haven't before :) After lunch in Eddie Rockets (during which, we almost got run over countless times), we went to the national gallery. I really enjoyed this part of the day, I would have liked more time to look around at the art, independently however :D In the gallery, there was a permanent Jack B. Yeats exhibition where we could clearly see the changes in his style of painting. I definitely preferred his later work, it was much more abstract and thoughtful...challenging xD