At the Groeningemuseum in Bruges to see its wonderful collection of Early Netherlandish paintings.

Jan van Eyck ‘Virgin and Child with Canon van der Paele’ (1436)

Jan van Eyck ‘Portrait of Margareta van Eyck’ (1439)

Hans Memling ‘Moreel Triptych’ (1484)

Gerard David ‘The Judgement of Cambyses’ (panel 2, 1498)

Hieronymus Bosch ‘The Last Judgement’ (1500 – 05)

Jan Provoost ‘Crucifixion’ (c.1501 – 05)

In the Belgian city of Ghent to see the amazing restoration work on the Ghent altarpiece, van Eyck’s ‘Adoration of the Mystic Lamb’. The restoration has removed all the sixteenth-century over-painting revealing van Eyck’s original colours.

Van Eyck ‘Adoration of the Mystic Lamb’ (completed 1432)

Restoration work being carried out on the main panel

Before and after restoration

At the Palais des Beaux-Arts in the northern French city of Lille to see its permanent collection. It is one of the largest art museums in France and has an excellent collection of paintings and sculpture from antiquity to modern art.

Dirk Bouts ‘The Ascension of the Elect’ (c.1450)

Dirk Bouts ‘The Fall of the Damned’ (c.1450)

Francisco Goya ‘Time of the Old Women’ (c.1808 – 12)

Gustave Courbet ‘After Dinner at Ornans’ (1849)

Edouard Manet ‘Berthe Morisot with a Fan’ (1874)

Fernand Leger ‘Two Women with a Blue Vase’ (1935)

Back in Girona for an all-Mozart concert at the Palau Auditorium with the Hungarian National Orchestra under János Kovács.  The ‘Requiem’ was particularly excellent.

Mozart: ‘Adagio and Fugue in c minor’; ‘Jupiter Symphony’; ‘Requiem’.

Relaxing in the Spanish fishing port of Denia.

In the picturesque Spanish city of Girona for the exhibition ‘Flemish and Dutch Art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’.

Houses along the river Onyar

Girona Cathedral

Pieter Bruegel the Younger ‘Peasants Dancing around the Maypole’ (c.1620)

Jan van Ravesteyn ‘Portrait of Pieter van Veen with his Son and Secretary’ (c.1620)

In the delightful medieval fortified town of Penne d’Agenais in the Lot-et-Garonne region of south-west France, with its very impressive basilica.

In the city of Toulouse, known as ‘La Ville Rose’ after the distinctive pink stone used to construct many of its buildings. Especially impressive are the central square, Place du Capitole, and the eleventh-century Basilique Saint-Sernin.

At the World Heritage Site of Lascaux in the Dordogne Valley in France. An amazing complex of caves with over 600 wall paintings from around 18,000 years ago. Discovered in 1940, it was open to the public from 1948 until 1963 when contamination brought about its closure. Seventeen years were then spent constructing Lascaux II, an exact replica of the cave and its paintings. The paintings are primarily of large animals that were once native to the area.

‘Hall of the Bulls’, Lascaux II

‘Horses’, Lascaux II

‘Megaloceros deer’, Lascaux II

An evening of Debussy and Mendelssohn played by the really excellent Quatuor Varèse at the Festival de Musique Romantique in Salviac in the Lot department of France.

Debussy String Quartet; Mendelssohn String Quartet no. 6.