Booking a Museum Tour

Museums.  They’re like cilantro, either you love them, or you hate them.

Thousands of dusty old artifacts, each one of them with a little card sitting in front written with a description of what it used to be or do.  Each one intended for us to bend over and read with bated breath.  <Yawn>  I’m getting bored just writing about it.

There has to be a better way, and it turns out there is!

We found ourselves ripping through too many museums in under an hour, ending with the feeling of why do people go to museums and why did we?  So, our mandate is now, if nothing else we get an Audio Guide. 

Usually about $5, these little MP3 players that come with an over-the-ear speaker or disposable earbud will take you through the museum and tell you all about what you’re seeing.  Getting bored of where you are?  Just walk to the next room and hit the Skip button and away you go.

A step up from the audio guides are Group tours.  Now you get a real-life expert who will take you through and tell you stories, anecdotes and their personal favourite unofficial tales of everything.  They usually need to be prearranged ahead of time, more expensive but can really be worth it.  The downside?  The tour stalling because of ‘that guy’ who keeps asking too many questions – we all know him.

The gold standard is the Private tour.  Yes, the most expensive.  Always scheduled.  But, worth it.  You see the things you’re interested in.  You spend extra time seeing things you’re interested in and skip the things that you’re not.  You have to go pee?  That’s okay, the guide will wait for you to come back. 

We have had guides give us the most amazing tours this way.  When we toured Vlad the Impaler’s castle in Brasov our guide Matthew moved the velvet rope out of the way for us so we could enter the princess’s bedroom.  As Anna was sitting on a centuries old chair, he then told other visitors stuck at the doorway that we were allowed in the room because we were family members of the owners who were visiting.  Then touring through Istanbul, I mentioned to our guide that I keep getting told I need a Turkish haircut.  Not only did he find a barber, he took us to his barber.  And yes, we all need to have a Turkish haircut one day.

So, at least do the audio guide – but if you can swing a private tour, just say yes.