Museums -- Good for learning, bad for dating.

You'd think a museum would make a good first date, right?  It does not. 
I love museums.  They're great for exercise -- lots of walking.  They're great for learning -- lots of reading.  They're also great when you want to tell your friends and acquaintances beside whom you occasionally feel inadequate that you are a man of culture and learning, for you have visited a museum.
I made the fatal mistake of listening to a woman who said she enjoyed visiting the art museum and translated that into a brilliant, clever, charming and interesting first date. 
We can walk and talk and learn together, I thought.
Well, much like my futile attempt to make the baseball team in high school, it was a home-run swing and a flailing miss.
We walked, but there was not a lot of talking.  Probably because museums are mostly places where people go to walk and learn, but not talk.  There was some talking, but, really, how can you go about all the first date get-to-know-you conversation when there is a naked statue staring you in the face?
"So, you have how many siblings?"
"Wow, that's a very provocative sculpture."
"And what did you study in college?"
"Oh, my, what a prominent appendage..."
So the result is a very awkward, very uncomfortable stroll through a very quiet place with someone you don't know. 
We walked, but there was not a lot of learning,  You don't get much of a chance to read the plaques denoting the significance of each particular piece.  Because you're walking around a very quiet place with someone you don't know.  And maybe you would also like to learn more about her?  But you don't know, because you're walking around a very quiet place with someone you don't know!  You're trying to learn about her, you're trying to absorb the collective artistic and historical brilliance of thousands of years of human achievement -- instead you walk away wondering, "Did I just waste three hours and sixty bucks?"
Plus, museums aren't romantic.  Maybe they are in movies.  But not in real life.  Nothing says two strangers coming together romantically like trying to read about a Romantic-era painting on a tarnished copper plaque next to a smelly old man with his audio guide headphones blaring.
But at least I learned something.  Museums are for learning, not dating.