TravelDay buddy

Salma

@quietgallery · she/her · Madrid, Spain

Two hours, three rooms, one painting I came for.

  • Museums
  • Painting
  • Quiet hours
  • Slow pace
  • Mid range

Salma is a drawn, fictional companion written by TravelDay. The places below are real entries in our catalogue, and each one names the guide it came from.

How Salma travels

I go to museums on weekday mornings and I leave before I am tired. Two hours, three rooms, one painting I came for. Then coffee, and nothing else scheduled.

I book the first slot and walk past the famous thing on the way in. I come back to it an hour later, when the tour groups have moved on and there is space to stand still.

I keep a list of paintings, not of museums. A city earns a trip if one picture in it is worth an hour of my life.

  • Museums
  • Art
  • Walking

Cities Salma keeps going back to

  • Paris

    France

    More rooms than a lifetime. I take four at a time.

  • New York

    United States

    The small collections are the ones I fly for.

  • Florence

    Italy

    One city, one century, and it is still not enough.

  • Madrid

    Spain

    I live here. Three museums on one avenue and I still find new walls.

  • Berlin

    Germany

    Collections rebuilt, moved and argued over, and you can read the argument.

  • Mexico City

    Mexico

    The buildings are half the collection.

What Salma recommends

Florence

  • Galleria degli Uffizi · Museum

    First slot of the day, Botticelli first, then let the corridors slow you down. Book weeks ahead in summer.

    • Seen in Gallerie degli Uffizi. The official gallery page describes the building constructed between 1560 and 1580 to Vasari's design

  • Palazzo del Bargello · Museum

    The sculpture museum most visitors skip, in a medieval courtyard. Walk in when the Uffizi queue defeats you.

    • Seen in Musei del Bargello. The official site presents the Bargello as one of five Florence museums under the same direction

  • Galleria dell'Accademia · Museum

    Forty-five minutes is enough. Look at the unfinished Prisoners in the corridor for longer than you look at the David.

Madrid

  • Prado Museum · Museum

    My home museum. Do not attempt it in one visit. Go for Velazquez one day and the black paintings another.

    • Seen in Time Out Madrid. First on Time Out's list of the best museums in Madrid, holding works by Goya, El Greco, Rubens and Velazquez

  • Museo Sorolla · Museum

    The painter's own house and garden in Chamberi. Twenty minutes in the garden first, then the studio.

    • Seen in Time Out Madrid. Listed among the best museums in Madrid, in the painter's former home and workspace

  • Museo Lázaro Galdiano · Museum

    A collector's mansion, barely visited, with ivories and enamels nobody talks about. The floor above is the good one.

    • Seen in Time Out Madrid. Listed among the best museums in Madrid as an eclectic private collection spanning centuries

Mexico City

  • Museo Nacional de Antropología · Museum

    The courtyard canopy on its single column is worth the ticket on its own. Two halls, then stop.

    • Seen in Time Out Mexico City. First on Time Out's list of the best museums in Mexico City, for its pre-Hispanic collection

New York

  • Frick Collection · Museum

    Old masters in rooms people lived in, which is a different experience from a gallery wall. Small enough to finish.

    • Seen in Time Out New York. Listed among the best museums in New York as a former Gilded Age mansion holding Old Master paintings

  • The Morgan Library & Museum · Museum

    Go for the original library room, then the drawings. One hour, and the best hour in midtown.

    • Seen in Time Out New York. Listed among the best museums in New York, holding Michelangelo drawings and Gutenberg Bibles

  • The Noguchi Museum · Museum

    Stone, daylight and a garden in Queens. Take the ferry and give yourself the whole afternoon.

    • Seen in Time Out New York. Listed among the best museums in New York as the sculptor's own museum with twelve galleries and a garden

  • Neue Galerie New York · Museum

    Two floors, Vienna and Berlin, and a cafe downstairs that is part of the visit. Book ahead on weekends.

    • Seen in Time Out New York. Listed among the best museums in New York as devoted to German and Austrian fine and decorative arts

Paris

  • Orangerie Museum · Museum

    Two oval rooms and eight water lily panels. Arrive at opening, sit on the bench, and let the room empty around you.

    • Seen in Time Out Paris. First on Time Out's list of the best museums in Paris, home to Monet's Nympheas

  • Museum of Orsay · Museum

    Go up to the fifth floor first and work down. Everyone else does the reverse.

    • Seen in Time Out Paris. Listed among the best museums in Paris, covering art from 1848 to 1914

  • Carnavalet Museum · Museum

    The history of the city in its own rooms, and free for the permanent collection. Good on a wet afternoon.

    • Seen in Time Out Paris. Described as the oldest museum run by the city, showing the history of Paris

  • Bourse de Commerce · Museum

    A concrete cylinder dropped inside a domed grain exchange. Walk the ramp between the two skins before you look at any art.

    • Seen in Time Out Paris. Listed among the best museums in Paris, housing the Pinault collection of around 10,000 works

Plans you can copy

Paris in four rooms a day

4 nights · January to March · Slow pace · Mid range

Four mornings of museums and four afternoons of one more, with nothing else booked.

  1. Day 1

    Water lilies first

    • Orangerie Museum · Morning · Museum

      Opening time, oval rooms, and a bench. Everything else today is a bonus.

    • Museum of Orsay · Afternoon · Museum

      Fifth floor first. Then the sculpture nave on the way out, when the light has gone low.

    • Rodin Museum · Afternoon · Museum

      A garden ticket alone is cheap, and in winter the garden is nearly empty.

  2. Day 2

    The Louvre, one wing only

    • Louvre Pyramid · Morning · Sight

      Stand in the courtyard for five minutes before you go under. The pyramid is a doorway, not a monument.

    • Louvre Museum · Morning · Museum

      Pick one wing and stay in it. I take Richelieu and the French sculpture courts, and I never reach the Mona Lisa.

    • The Cluny Museum · Afternoon · Museum

      Roman baths, medieval rooms, and the unicorn tapestries. Thirty minutes walk from the Louvre and a century away.

  3. Day 3

    Marais, three courtyards

    • Musée national Picasso-Paris · Morning · Museum

      A seventeenth century mansion with a modern stair cut through it. Follow the chronology, it is worth it here.

    • Carnavalet Museum · Afternoon · Museum

      Shop signs, ballroom panels, whole rooms lifted from lost houses. Free, and easy to dip into.

    • Bourse de Commerce · Afternoon · Museum

      Walk the gap between the concrete drum and the old dome twice, once each way.

  4. Day 4

    West, and quieter

    • Musée Marmottan Monet · Morning · Museum

      The basement room of late Monet is the reason to come out here. Almost nobody is in it.

    • Quai Branly Museum · Afternoon · Museum

      Dark, winding and deliberately disorienting. Read the labels, they have been rewritten in the last few years.

    • Palace of Tokyo · Evening · Museum

      Open until midnight most days, which makes it the only museum I visit after dinner. Raw concrete and whatever is current.

  • Seen in Time Out Paris. Notes that several large Paris museums, including the Louvre and the Orsay, are free on the first Sunday of the month

Madrid, three museums and two houses

3 nights · October to April · Slow pace · Mid range

The avenue first, then the two collectors' houses that nobody queues for.

  1. Day 1

    Two thirds of the triangle

    • Prado Museum · Morning · Museum

      Velazquez, then Goya, then leave. The last two free hours of the day are busier than the ticketed morning.

    • Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza · Afternoon · Museum

      Start at the top and walk down through five centuries in an afternoon. It fills the gaps the Prado leaves.

    • CaixaForum Madrid · Evening · Museum

      An old power station lifted off the ground, with a green wall beside it. Open late, good for a last hour.

  2. Day 2

    Guernica, then the ancients

  3. Day 3

    Two house museums

    • Museo Sorolla · Morning · Museum

      Garden, then studio, then the small rooms. The light in the studio is the whole argument of his painting.

    • Museo Lázaro Galdiano · Afternoon · Museum

      Four floors of one man's appetite. Go up to the ivories and take your time.

    • Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas · Afternoon · Museum

      Five floors of furniture, ceramics and a tiled Valencian kitchen on the fourth. Almost nobody goes, which is the point.

  • Seen in Time Out Madrid. Names the Prado, the Reina Sofia and the Thyssen-Bornemisza as the trio at the centre of Madrid's museum scene

Florence, one museum a morning

3 nights · November to February · Slow pace · Mid range

Three days, six collections, and no attempt to see everything.

  1. Day 1

    The big gallery, early

    • Galleria degli Uffizi · Morning · Museum

      First slot. Botticelli before ten, then the corridor windows over the river.

    • Ponte Vecchio · Midday · Walk

      Cross it once, then look at it from the next bridge down, which is where you actually see it.

    • Museo dell'Opera del Duomo · Afternoon · Museum

      The original bronze doors are in here, at eye level. Less crowded than anything on the square outside.

  2. Day 2

    Marble, and then bronze

    • Galleria dell'Accademia · Morning · Museum

      Book ahead. Walk the corridor of unfinished figures slowly before you turn to the David.

    • Medici Chapel · Midday · Museum

      The New Sacristy is one room and it is enough. Sit on the bench and look at the two tombs facing each other.

    • Palazzo del Bargello · Afternoon · Museum

      Start in the courtyard, then the ground floor sculpture. Closed on some Mondays, so check the day.

  3. Day 3

    Across the river

    • Palazzo Pitti · Morning · Museum

      The Palatine rooms are hung floor to ceiling, the old way. Two hours, no more.

    • Boboli Gardens · Afternoon · Nature

      All slope and gravel, which is worth knowing before you set out. Climb to the top for the view back over the tiles.

    • Palazzo Vecchio · Evening · Museum

      It keeps long hours, so it is a good last stop. The great hall, then the small study behind it, which is the better room.

  • Seen in Gallerie degli Uffizi. The official gallery page sets out the collection from the Middle Ages onwards in the Vasari building

Salma is a TravelDay buddy: drawn, fictional, and not an account in the network. Research edition 2026-09-17.