Friday August 18th 2017

Quick Bond stop in Amsterdam


I was recently in Amsterdam for a few days and I made sure to check out the Bond location here.

So this is a very short blog update for those locations. :)


The movie in question is of course "Diamonds Are Forever" and the two scenes can be seen in this Youtube clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbUXN8u4Mko

Here are the bridge where Mr Wint and Mr Kidd observed the police dragging poor Mrs Whistler from the canal:

And the place where they pulled her out:

And here is where Tiffany Case lives:

Saturday July 29th 2017

My Day in India


I was going to another business trip to China and wanted to a detour to give me motivation for it.

I compared the map with my Travel-ToDo-list and found... India! :)

So be it.
I arranged for a 24 transfer in Delhi and started making plans.

A colleague of mine, Mats, found out my plans and joined me on this trip.
We had a driver (Mukesh) for the whole day and he picked us up at the airport 03:00 am and started driving towards Agra.

After several hour (where Mats and me slept most of the time) we got there.


There was lots of cows and monkeys in this town:

Anyhow, we started off with the mainattraction; Taj Mahal!!

 Six down, one to go!  :)


The Taj Mahal with its leaning minorets:

It's not that super-much to see so, after a while we continued to Agra Fort.

Bonus for the day was a James Bond location! :)
On this balcony (not accessable for the public) a very short clip was filmed for the movie 'Octopussy' (a flyby of Taj Mahal to make sure the audience understood that Bond went to India).

After walking around in the heat (43 degrees Celcius today) in the fort, we decided we were done with Agra and headed back to Delhi. It was then only 10:00 am.


Once in Delhi, our first stop was the Lotus temple. It had been suggested to us by an Indian colleague of us (who also got us our driver).
We googled it and it's architecture intrigues us so we went there.

A very beautiful building!

Of course it had pools around it for the lotus to float "on": 

Then we went to the India Gate, a war monument for the Indian soldiers who died in World War I.

We also visited the Raj Ghat (memorial for Mahatma Gandhi) and looked at the parlament before we went back to the airport.

A very intense day indeed. Jolly good!

Wednesday September 16th

We landed in Rio at 4:45 local time. We didn't sleep too much on the flight, but it feels ok anyway, which is good. We have some places to be today!

We got a pick up to our hotel; the Miramar Hotel by Windsor. At arrival we they gave us a glass of champagne and a few minutes later our room. We wasn't sure if we would get our room so early, but luckily we did.

Our room had this great view of Copacabana:


Then we took a shower and got ready for today's adventure.

First a taxi to the cable car beneath the Sugar loaf. After waiting a few minutes, we took the forst car for the day to the first plateau.

We are not there only for the fine view, we have also Bond business to attend.

At the first plateau, we could recognize scenes from the movie Moonraker:

Then we headed up to the second and last plateau, the sugar loaf itself.

Here we found even more Bond locations.

And of course a lovely view of Rio.

We spend some time there (and ate breakfast), but eventually we headed down again.

New taxi; this time to the train/funicular that would take us to Cristo Redentor (you can also take a minibus up there, which would be simpler and take much less time, but I wanted to do the train).
We arrived at the station at 10:20 - and got train tickets to 11:40.
During the wait, the heat came to Rio. It is really getting hot here now.

A 20 minutes train trip later, we arrived at the top of Corcovado.
And there is Cristo - and a whole bunch of tourists.

We did our thing, taking photos of the guy himself, the lovely view

and a few selfies,

before we escaped the sun and went back to the hotel to take it easy for a while.

When the temperature outside started to go down, we went to the beach. Our hotel was just by Tower 5.

Copacabana is a nice beach, but with big waves coming in which made it hard to do any real bathing. So we just jumped in for a bit, sat on our beach chairs - and repeated the process.
It was very nice to relax for a bit.

Back at the room, we had earlier discovered a fun leaflet from the hotel:

Henrik now tried to ask the cleaning lady in French (the closest language to Brazilian Portuguese any of us spoke) to get another one so we could both take it home to show friends.
He talked to her for several minutes, trying to make her understand.
It didn't work.

Five minutes later the cleaning lady came back with an envelope - with condoms.


Time for our last meal in South America. We stopped by our hotel pool to have a Caiprinha (of course - when in Brazil!) and then went to a nice Italian restaurant (Don Camillo) recommended to us by the reception at the hotel.
The food was very good.
Then back to the hotel. We can actually sleep in tomorrow. Yay! :)

Sunday August 4th

A Bondian Adventure


Usually I travel to places I want to see - and as a coincidence the same place usually happens to be a film location for some random James Bond movie. But this time it's different.

This time the only reason for this trip is to see James Bond locations - and mainly that of Piz Gloria; Blofeld's lair in 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service'. In real life a restaurant in the Alps called Schilthorn.
Since Bregenz is "close", I decided to go there as well - and hopefully get a real opera treat at the same time.


My journey starts on a Sunday morning with the first international flight leaving Landvetter airport; the 06:15 to Munich.
It shouldn't be allowed to get up this early on a Sunday morning.

At Munich I transferred to a flight to Zurich. Once there I took the train to Bregenz; my main goal for today.
I had to switch trains twice; first time I had only six minutes to find my new train and get on it. The second time I only had three. Thankfully you can really trust the Swiss trains - I had no problems at either station.

At Bregenz, I went a little further; to a suburb called Dornbirn and my hotel for the night; Harry's Home Hotels.
I got room 234 and it was quite OK (once they cleaned my room which they hadn't when I arrived).

I went out for something to eat and found a nice place where I had a wienerschnitzen and beer. It was pretty good!

Back to the hotel I freshened up for tonight's festivity; to see the opera "The Magic Flute" on the Seebühne stage at Bregenzer Festspiele.

Now; this is the same place where Bond was in 'Quantum of Solace' (although they played Tosca at the time). I was very excited getting there.
My initial plan was to take a taxi back and forth to the opera, but I learned that taking the train took about the same amount of time and the train was free for opera guests (I live three minutes from the train at Dortbirn - and the Seebühne is another three minutes from the Bregenz station). So I took the train and was happy with that.

On site at the Seebühne, I recognize myself at once. It was just like 'Quantum of Solace' (although it felt smaller):

I looked around inside and found several places where they filmed; like here:

Quantum of Solace

Today

And here:

Quantum of Solace

Today

I also smiled my way into Greene's theatre box and was able to sit down for a little while. =)

After all the Bond sightings, I changed focus to the opera I was about to see.

Here is some pictures of the scene:

And then it started. And I was blown away.
This was something out of the ordinary. They really took advantage of the stage in the water - and what they have built on it.

It was AMAZING!!

If you are an opera fan , it is your god-damn duty to see an opera here!

I am a bit worried though, seeing an opera here - will that make all future operas be... not so exiting? Like when you eat the perfect meal - and all the meals you will eat for the rest of your life will never reach that taste. You know what I mean?

After the opera, I took the train back to the hotel. I have another long day of travels tomorrow.

Monday August 5th

Today I am a very happy man. After a long day of travelling, I got to see more Bond locations than expected this first day in Lauterbrunnen.

But let's start from the beginning. I left Bregenz slightly before 9:00. I had a very busy day using nine different trains and buses to reach my destination in Switzerland.

The main reason for this complicated route was that I wanted to tick off a country I haven't been to; Liechtenstein.
The country was actually larger than expected - and very beautiful surrounded by mountains.

I walked around a bit in the capital; Vaduz, before continuing.

After more buses and trains I arrived at Lauterbrunnen at around 16:00.

AND I DIDN'T EVEN HAVE TIME TO GET OFF THE TRAIN BEFORE I SAW MY FIRST BOND LOCATION!

The kiosk as seen in 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service':

And I found more sightings when looking around the station!

This made me very happy!! (but wait - there's more [soon]!)

Leaving the station in euphoria for my hotel; Hotel Schützen, I got a surprise when I got there. This sign was outside the hotel:

Why the heck does my hotel have a sign from the Swedish Ice hockey committee?

The girl in the front desk didn't know, so I'll ask the manager tomorrow.

Rest for a few minutes, then out to eat something - while trying to sort out what I'll do the upcoming days here.

After the food I had some time to look at Lauterbrunnen. I also decided to get closer to one of the waterfalls they have around here; the Staubbachfall (apparently the highest free-falling waterfall in Europe - 297 m).

But before I got there I saw this part of the road:

It felt familiar (doesn't it!?!?) and - oh, yes - 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service' strikes again:

This made me look around more closely - and behold; the Bond locations are EVERYWHERE!

After all the photographing was done I actually had to take a minute (or ten) to let it all sink in. I was on classic James Bond territory! :)

Then I continued to Staubbachfall and it was big. Very nice to see.

I then returned to the hotel and three minutes after I got there, this very hot day changed to heavy rain and hailstorm.

Glad I'm not going out more today! :)

This has been a very exciting day. And tomorrow won't be any less - it's time to visit the Bond location; Schilthorn aka Piz Gloria (if the weather works with me...).

I have wanted to go there for like... EVAR!

Until then - ta!