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| Larry at Piz Gloria on the peak of Schilthorn - Switzerland |
Travel photos. There are few things I enjoy more than travel photos. I love taking them. I love coming home and editing my photos. I love posting them on the Internet and in blogs. And I love looking at them over and over many times after my vacation ended. Each time I view them I relive the experience of the trip all over again no matter how long ago the actual trip happened.
If you know me at all you probably know I am a huge James Bond fan. And I have visited many James Bond movie locations in my travels. I don't go out of my way to visit Bond sites, but if I am in the area and one is near by I do want my photo taken there. In 2003 I got to visit one of the Holy Grail sites for Bond fans. I was in Switzerland with my then partner. I let him know with no question that while we were in Switzerland that I had to see Piz Gloria, Blowfeld's fortress from the movie On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Piz Gloria is a rotating restaurant on top the peak of Schilthorn towering above the tiny Alpine community of Murren. It's very isolated. It is not easy to get there. It is not one of those places where you can take a train, walk out of the station and say there it is. You have to plan your way to get there. There are no roads to reach Murren. There are no cars in Murren. We had to take a train from Bern to Interlaken Switzerland. From Interlaken we took a train to Lauterbrunner. Then from Lauterbrunner we had to take the narrow gauge train up the mountain to Murren. The train station is at the north of the village. From there we had to walk through the beautiful village of Murren to the Schilthornbahn . This is a mountain cable car that takes you to the peak of Schilthorn at 10,000 feet in the Alps. There is also a stop and change in cable cars half way up at the station called Birg. So you have to plan and prepare your journey if you are going to Piz Gloria.
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| Larry at the Schilthornbahn station of Birg |
It was one of my favorite all time travel experiences to stand on the top of Schilthorn and see Piz Gloria. And it was such a wonderful photo opportunity. Neither my ex partner nor I had digital camera's at this time. We were still taking photo using film. And with film you can't take hundreds of photos to bring home and edit and delete the bad ones. You only have a few chances to get the right photo and then hope it turns our well when you get it developed. We ended up with a couple of good photos of he and I together at Piz Gloria and I had a couple of him alone at the location. It never dawned on me until we ended our relationship two years later that I did not have a photo of me alone at this Holy Grail of Bond fandom. I only had the photos of he and I and of him alone. So I have spent years angry at myself for never having my own individual photo taken at Piz Gloria. It was just a stupid mistake.
Every time some one chats about Piz Gloria in one of the Bond fan groups I get angry all over again because I don't have of photo of myself to share with the group proving I had been there. And as each year passed I realized more and more that I would probably never have that opportunity to return there and take my photo. Last year my husband Mark and I went to Switzerland. It was my first time back since the trip with my ex back in 2003. I really wanted to return to Piz Gloria and take that long lost photo. But it was just too difficult. We were no where near Bern or Murren on this trip. And it would have been really out of our way to try and get there at this time. Although that was a disappointed I was still thrilled to be back in Switzerland and share this wonderful country with Mark. We visited my favorite city of Zurich. We went to several other mountain peak restaurants much like Piz Gloria. And I made sure to have solo photos taken as well as photos with Mark this time.
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| Mark and I at Uetilberg overlooking Zurich |
Since the beginning of this new year it's been a very cold winter. I have spent a lot of time inside my house. I decided to take the time and organize some of my junk that I have need to sort through for a long time. Right now I am working on my home office. It's a bit of a disaster. I have a closet full of old scrapbook papers and supplies that I have not used in over ten years. I am taking them all to Goodwill. Hopefully some one will find good use for them. I also found several boxes of old photos. A lot of these were very old family photos. So I decided to scan them and share them with my daughters. Also in the box was several envelopes full of photos that I realized had been taken by my ex. I remember when we broke up almost 13 years ago now that I had gone through all of our photos and divided them up. We had duplicates made of all of our photos together so I took half of mine and left them with him and then took half of his duplicates and brought them with me. I really had no desire to look at old photos of him and I at the time so I just put them all in a box and packed them away when I moved. I had never really looked that close at his photos before as I was usually more interested in the ones that I had taken not ones he had taken . I was really surprised at some of the photos and have scanned them to save digitally. And then suddenly there it is. A photo of me at Piz Gloria. I did not even remember him taking the photo. All these years being angry at myself for being so stupid about not having a photo taken and now here it is. The photo at the top of this blog is me at Piz Gloria from this collection of photos. The one above of me at Birg is also from this collection. I was really happy to see them. And seeing the Alpine peaks of Schilthorn seems kind of appropriate with all of the cold weather and ice outside. Below is one last photo of me at Piz Gloria. I will be using this in conversations in James Bond facebook groups and posting it to my Flickr account also very soon.
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| Larry at Piz Gloria |
