The National Museum, Manila

My first time to enter this particular museum!  It wasn't in our plans either but it turned out that our Emirates flight was scheduled to depart at midnight.  That meant we practically had the whole day yet to do something.  We really had to find a way to kill time because check-out at the condotel was at 12 noon.  Breakfast was only available till about 09.00, so we spent the rest of the morning finishing our packing and then just cooling off in the room till lunchtime.

We ended up roaming around the museum for almost 3 hours.  There were quite a number of art works familiar to me (classical style) and others which were new, but I did not expect to admire the specimens of sculpture displayed.  I forget who made this one but it made such an impression when I saw it that I knew it stood a big chance of becoming today's blipshot.  She could be anyone's lola (grandma) but what I like about this piece of work is its solidity and weight.  Her expression is so familiar but it makes the whole piece even heavier.  The result is a kind of dead seriousness which I found difficult to ignore.  Having been born and raised here, I can also understand the emotions reflected on her face.  It is hard to explain it here using only a few words, though.

Several of the portraits were also of excellent quality; they looked like photographs.  The extra shots will show you other favourites.

Anyway, afterwards, we walked (35 degrees, 100% humidity, as usual) to Ocean Park for a quick lunch but decided not to buy tickets to anything because we want to visit it another time with the cousins and their kids and grandkids.  A taxi ride brought us back to the malls near our condotel where we really took our time until we ran out of ideas and just spent one last hour at the condotel, where we had left our suitcases after check-out.  I'd already checked in online so there was no need to rush.  It was a full flight and thankfully there were no departure delays.