Those see-as-many-museums-as you-can-possibly-fit-into-2-days passes seem like a good deal at first glance. They are tempting, costing the equivalent of generally 2.5 to 3 entrance fees. I could easily see 3 museums in a couple of days, right? Wrong. Oh so very, very wrong. As it turns out, I am a slow museumee. (Not a word, not yet, but should it catch on you read it here first!)

Much to my surprise I have experienced a drastic shift in museum viewing style, an approach which now involves hours of meandering, reading, absorbing, writing notes even, along with the expected activity of actually looking at the objects of art next to the lengthy descriptions I previously ignored somewhat guiltily. I have gone from museum sprinter to museum laggard, an unexpected transmutation I suspect developed somewhere over the North Atlantic Ocean.

While other museum attendees are surreptitiously taking selfies of their mugs in front of Van Gogh’s ‘Tournesols’, glancing cagily from the turned back of the museum attendant to the screen on their smart phone and adjusting the framing, my fingers are flying across the keyboard of my ipod touch as I sketch in shorthand how such a simple palette could evoke a kaleidoscope of sensory reactions. My eyes feast, my thoughts hum with the curator’s words hanging on the wall next to the masterpiece, and a little voice inside me keeps whispering in awe,

‘This is so much better than the poster!’

It took me 5 hours to get through the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, 6.5 hours for the Rijksmuseum. I was almost locked into the Rodin Museum in Paris. I skipped the Louvre, partially because I had already been inside 18 years ago and the line just to get in made me shudder, but mostly because I was fairly confident I would have been dragged out at closing while kicking and screaming, ‘There’s still another 250 rooms to see!’

Three or more museums in 2 days? Sure, if museums stayed open 24 hours and the staff were a little less persnickety about people innocently rehydrating within gazing distance of the greats.

I have resigned myself to the fact that I will not be saving money on museums during this trip. There is a culture category in my budget calculator (read: museum entrance fees) which comes alarmingly close in size to the wedge of the pie chart representing grocery expenditures. If a woman’s gotta eat this woman’s going to enjoy each bite, feasting languidly on the tasty and splendiforous banquets laid out on canvases and in the form of sculptures across Europe.

So, should you ever have the pleas … opportunity to visit a museum with me, might I suggest bringing a good book or two?