Megan Engelhardt

My husband and I honeymooned in London, because having nothing to do on a beach didn’t really sound great to either of us.

(We recently celebrated our 19th anniversary and we agree that our only regret is not getting married sooner, so you could say things are going well.)

It was a pretty great honeymoon. We toured very old things, and ate excellent fish and chips, and saw The Lord of the Rings the Musical which, it is not an exaggeration to say, was life-changing.

We took a day to go to Paris (neither of us were particularly impressed) and spent some time hopping around the Louvre. It was pretty cool, but also we were young and didn’t care too much about art and didn’t appreciate things as much as we should have. Or maybe we appreciated it as much as we could at that point in our lives, which wasn’t a ton.

Now that we’re old(er), we’ve found a new appreciation for art museums. I actually enjoy walking around quiet galleries, looking at sculptures and paintings and prints. (But not furniture and not pretentious more abstract modern art. I’m not a fully evolved art enjoyer yet.)

When vacationing with part of our extended family, my husband and I took a kid-free afternoon and visited the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, VA. It was free, it was air-conditioned, and it looked interesting. A thrice-over win!

I really enjoyed looking through these galleries. The collection was pretty cool — a Picasso! — and I liked how they occasionally had modern pieces interspersed with antique ones. It was neat to see a through-line of humanity from then to now, and to know it will continue on.

Like, look at this little guy. Would I, in 2026, like a pot shaped like a crab? Absolutely! Did someone in Mexico two thousand years ago also want a pot shaped like a crab? Absolutely!

We spent a lot of time in free historical places when I was a kid. Mostly battlefields, to be honest, because Pennsylvania has a lot of battlefields. There were also plenty of museums of various stripes, though, and while I haven’t always loved art museum, I have always have enjoyed seeing very old things and learning new information about history that I wouldn’t have otherwise run across. I’m very glad to have married someone who feels the same. For example, here is my husband using his rudimentary Greek to try and read this ancient inscription.

I would highly recommend The Chrysler Museum of Art if you’re ever near the area. We only saw a part of the collection and left saying we want to come back and see the rest. For people who spent most of our time in the Louvre nineteen years ago looking for a bathroom and water, that’s some pretty good growth.