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"Bond motored across the beautiful Pont du Mont Blanc and along the brightly lit quai to the Bavaria, a modest Alsatian brasserie that had been the rendezvous of the great in the days of the League of Nations. He sat by the window and drank Enzian washed down with pale Löwenbrau. He thought first about Goldfinger. There was now no doubt what he was up to."

Pirita´s nails by Sara Pylkkänen @ Susanna´s Nail Salon, Järvenpää, Finland

Mika and Unireso ticket machine

Our room

• The Hotel is 5 minutes far from the airport by train (direct connection)
• Trade fairs and other important sites of the city are easily accessible from the hotel through the main bus routes
• You can reach Lake in just a 5-minute walk
• You can reach downtown Geneva and the old town in a 15-minute walk and international organizations including the United Nations, in 10-12 minutes by bus.

”Below them, the lakeside of Geneva slid into view. The airship slowed, tilted forward and turned gently.

- 'No playing around, Nick,' Rahani called in warning. 'Just do what you normally do. Then take her straight over Le Richemond.' 

- 'I'm doing what I normally do. I'm doing it by the book,' the pilot said laconically. 'That's what you wanted and that is just what you're getting.'

- 'And what,' Bond called back, 'are we really doing, anyway? What is the caper that's going to change history?'"

Mont Blanc bridge

Bavaria / Le Relais de I´Entrecote @ 49, Rue de Rhone

"Bond motored across the beautiful Pont du Mont Blanc and along the brightly lit quai to the Bavaria, a modest Alsatian brasserie that had been the rendezvous of the great in the days of the League of Nations. He sat by the window and drank Enzian washed down with pale Löwenbrau. He thought first about Goldfinger. There was now no doubt what he was up to."

"Behind the desk there was a reproduction of the Annigoni portrait of the Queen. On the other walls were advertisements for Ferguson tractors and other agricultural machinery. From outside the wide window came the hum of traffic along the Quai Wilson. A steamer hooted. Bond glanced out of the window and watched it ride across the middle distance."

Did Bond live here?

"But there was something else about Geneva that appealed to him, and he
agreed with Ian Fleming on the subject. For both of them it had, what Fleming called, a ‘Simenon-like quality – the quality that makes a thriller-writer want to take a tin-opener and find out what goes on behind the façade, behind the great families who keep the banner of Calvin flying behind the lace curtains in their fortresses in the Rue des Granges, the secrets behind the bronze grilles of the great Swiss banking corporations, the hidden turmoil behind the beautiful bland face of the country’.

This then was Switzerland for Bond, and he was fascinated by it. He had two rooms with a respectable Swiss lady over a sweet-shop off the Quai Gustave Ador."

"He enjoyed the rackety routine of life with old Frau Nisberg; he enjoyed the silence of his room with its views across the lake; he enjoyed Frau Nisberg's cooking."

We wondered whether this could have been one part of Geneva University once, where Bond had studied...

"As a compromise I was finally packed off to my father's old school, Fettes. I
rather liked it after Eton, stayed there until sixteen, then got fed up with it. Decided it was time to move on. Got to Geneva University. And that was where the trouble really started.’"

Parc La Grange

Pasta Prima restaurant @ Rue du Mont-Blanc, 24

"Bond arrived at Kennedy Airport mid-day and took a taxi into Manhattan. As it was a weekday, the city was alive with the energy that made New York the premiere cosmopolitan city. It was a sunny, unseasonably warm spring day, and the Manhattanites were out in force. Traffic was dense, horns were bellowing and endless swarms of pedestrians darted across intersections."

"Bond had taken her to the station and had kissed her once hard on the lips and gone away. It hadn't been love, but a quotation had come into Bond's mind as his cab moved out of Pennsylvania station. "Some love is fire, some love is lust. But the finest, cleanest love is lust".

Neither had had regrets. Had they committed a sin? If so, which one? A sin against chastity? Bond smiled to himself. There was a quotation for that too, and from a saint - Saint Augustine: "Oh Lord, give me Chastity. But don't give it yet!"

Ian Fleming: "Goldfinger" 

See the whole 007 Travel story here

See more 007 BOOK LOCATIONS here