You look good for a rotting corpse that's thousands of years old, congratulations.

A couple of weeks ago (yes, weeks, I am perfectly aware that I have not been paying as much attention to this blog as I probably should and my sincerest apologies for that) we visited the Yeats exhibition, the National Gallery and the National museum.

First we went to the Yeats exhibition in the National Library of Ireland. I, personally, was very excited for this as I like Yeats a lot. I was looking forward to hearing about his life and his family. 

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I knew some things about Yeats before this trip but I learned some pretty fascinating things about him, too. I learned that he had two sisters called Lillie and Lollie (yeah, no, don't ask) who were embroiderers and a brother, Jack, who was an artist. It was a very artistic family.

I liked hearing about his relationship with Maud Gonne. He was pretty keen on her.

After this we went to the National Gallery to look at some art. I have no artistic ability whatsoever but I still really enjoyed it. We looked at some art by Jack Yeats to fit in with the whole Yeats-Trip thing. My favourite painting by him was Grief:

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The reason I like this painting so much is because you have to really look at it to see what it means. It seems that the Yeats family was big into hidden messages. 

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We also looked at the Opening of the Sixth Seal by Francis Danby.                                                                                                                 

 I suppose one of the reasons I like it so much is because of the story behind it. Apparently, at the time it was painted (1828), it was so terrifying that some people fainted when they saw it. When it was in a gallery, a man was so angered by the painting that he slashed it with a knife. If you look closely you can see the slash. 

After the very exciting trip to the gallery, we went to the National Museum to look at the bog bodies because we had been studying Seamus Heaney in school, who wrote a poem about the bog bodies (The Tollund Man). Seeing the bog bodies made me feel a little bit ill, especially when I realised that we were looking at real people who were murdered. I had a bit of a moral dilemma here: On one hand I was thinking that this was for a good and educational purpose. However, I was also thinking that these people deserved a little bit more than this, that maybe they'd appreciate a proper burial instead of being kept in a glass box for many years. 

Despite this moral dilemma, I had a great time and this was one of my favourite outings of the year. I think everyone had a good time, too.

Well, until next time.