To be honest, I’ve never really been what you might consider a ‘museum enthusiast’. And this is definitely an area where Ryan and I differ greatly.
While we were still in the early stages of our relationship, Ryan came out to Wisconsin to visit me over our Summer break. And for some reason, I decided to take him to the Milwaukee Public Museum as something “fun” to do (I’m not really sure what I was thinking). And probably to no one’s surprise, it did not go the way that I was thinking that it would.
I had this idea in my head that we would spend (max) 2 hours at the museum – basically just breezing through each exhibit – and then we would be on our merry way for a nice lunch somewhere downtown.
What I did not know about Ryan, is that he is the kind of person who wants to read every single tiny plaque throughout the entire museum…and I mean every. single. one. To be honest, this was pretty much my own personal Hell. But as I mentioned before, since we were newly dating, I put a smile on my face and spent the better part of the day at the museum with him.
Luckily we can both laugh about that now…and thankfully we’ve also both made adjustments. Basically Ryan is happy to keep a moving pace throughout a museum with me, he just makes a point to speak up when there is something that he wants to stop and read. (And I am pretty naughty and typically keep walking anyways.) (Sorry honey.)
When we started planning out our time for Paris, luckily (for both of us) while flipping through the Rick Steve’s Paris guidebook, I read something about taking an English tour that caught my attention. It reminded me that we had taken a museum tour once before in Boston, at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and both really loved it. So I started to think that signing up for the museum tours was probably our best bet at having “fun” while touring the museums in Paris.
And as it turned out, the tours that we took ended up being some of the highlights of our entire trip. I can honestly say that I have finally hit my stride with museums. In fact, I think that we both feel that way.
Taking the tour is far more interesting than reading those tiny plaques (sorry honey) or renting the headphone guide (sorry again honey). You get an in-depth overview of all of the most famous pieces in the museum, but with a much more interesting history behind the art, the artists, and the museum itself.
So if you are maybe the kind of person that is a little bit on the fence about visiting museums, or maybe you’ve found yourself in a relationship with a plaque-reading enthusiast, definitely give museum tours a chance. They really left an impression on us.