I have a weakness for art museums. I get all excited at the thought of going to a new city and visiting their art museum. If I only have a very small amount of time I ask for a map of the museum and go straight to their Impressionist collection. Next I check their collection of surrealists, like Salvador Dali and Frida Kahlo, if they have one.

I didn’t visit the Prado museum when I went to Spain when I was seventeen, I was too young and didn’t appreciate art the way I do now. I first visited the Prado when I was twenty-five and I fell in love. It is my favorite place in Madrid, but I didn’t get through all of it. So when I returned with my husband and brother-in-law and sister-in-law in 2000 I wanted to go through the whole thing.

When I think back in retrospect I was brutal. I can’t believe I dragged them through the entire place. I can’t believe they went along with it instead of ditching me for sangrias in a plaza nearby. I wouldn’t have been offended.

Now I’m older and I have two impatient little ones who don’t quite appreciate art the way I do, yet. My daughter, who is seven, is getting there. She can usually identify a Van Gogh or a Degas painting. So when I think of vacationing around the United States for family vacations, like we are planning to do, I will have to be selective of what art museums we visit. I’m going to have to plan our visits ahead of time by mapping out the museum and deciding what I want to see first, because it’s very unlikely that I will get through a whole museum with two kids in one visit.

Interesting how travel and how I visit art museums are two of the many things that have completely changed now that I’m a mother. When I want to go to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, I take them with me most of the time. I want for them to start appreciating art at a young age. I figure that the more I take them to museums they will become accustomed to visiting them and they will enjoy our visits to museums in other cities. It’s a good habit to instill in them.

Yes my days of spending hours looking at art in a museum are shortened now, but some day I hope they too will appreciate walking the entire Prado.