A fellow blogger recently wrote an article about what it is that gives people “the travel bug”, is it genetic handed on from parents, is it a single experience of a childhood holiday, is it influence from a friend? In my case it doesn’t seem to be any of these, certainly not genetic because the only trip my dad ever took abroad was a return trip to France in 1940 coming back via the beach at Dunkirk, and the first trip my mum took was in her 70s to see the area around the beaches of Normandy! I think that a major reason for travel was missed by the blogger connected to much simpler motivation, the drive of curiosity or wanting to know more, to explore, to see things up close you’ve read about or seen on TV. A recent example for both of us was seeing a TV programme about the Roman aqueduct at Segovia in Spain; it was absolutely stunning and we just had to go and see it for ourselves …….. so we did! I suppose this is what leads to so called “bucket lists” of things to see before you die and we haven’t done bad so far taking in Everest, Northern Lights, Mona Lisa, Great Wall of China, The Colosseum, all of which would appear on most people’s lists. But we seem to create a list each year of things to see, and 2016 was no different except that it contained lots of “culture” close to home in Europe with galleries, museums and ancient artefacts such as the aqueduct at Segovia. So this post is a review of the best culture bits of 2016, a mosaic of all of the museums and galleries we visited in some beautiful cities across Europe. As you can imagine we have thousands of photos from Paris, Rome, Bruges, Prague, Budapest, Beaune, Malaga, Marbella, Madrid, as well as so many from the local museums we have already written about in Cirencester, Oxford, Swindon ….. but we hope you enjoy this small sample:

Paris: The Louvre

Rome: The Capitoline

Bruges: The Groeninge

Malaga: The Picasso

Marbella: Museo Ralli

Prague: The Slav Epic & Alphonse Mucha

Madrid: The Prado & El Bosco

Categories: England

Tags: alphonse mucha, architecture, art, art gallery, bruges, capitoline, louvre, madrid, marbella, museo ralli, Museums, paris, prague, Rome