The name is Perez, Anthony Perez!

The release of No Time To Die felt bigger to me than just another movie premiere. It marked the end of Daniel Craig’s run as Bond, and with that came a wave of reflection I did not expect to hit so hard. A few days after seeing the film, I still found myself sitting with it, not only because it was emotional, but because it brought me back to something much more personal.

Long before I ever became a traveler, James Bond was already showing me the world.

Where Travel Comes Into It

At first glance, that probably sounds dramatic. What does James Bond have to do with becoming a world traveler?

For me, a lot.

The Bond films, all twenty-five of them, were one of the earliest things that planted a real curiosity about the world in me. I was not sitting there as a kid analyzing cinematography or thinking deeply about location scouting. I was simply absorbing it all without realizing what it was doing to me. The action pulled me in, the style made it feel larger than life, and the movement from one country to another opened up something in my imagination that never really left.

It Started Young

I started watching James Bond films when I was seven years old, and from that point on, I was hooked. GoldenEye was the first Bond film I ever saw, and for a kid already obsessed with movies, it had everything. The action was incredible, Bond was smooth and sharp in a way that felt larger than life, and above all, he was always moving through the world.

That part mattered more than I understood at the time.

Bond was never stuck in one place. One film could take you from Europe to the Caribbean, then somewhere in Asia or the Middle East, all within the same story. Even as a kid, that kind of movement fascinated me. It made the world feel bigger, more alive, and full of places that I wanted to understand for myself one day.

James Bond as a Traveler

Looking back now, I honestly think the Bond films were travel films in disguise.

Yes, they are action films. Yes, they are spy films. But they are also deeply tied to place. Jamaica, Istanbul, Iceland, Italy, Las Vegas, Greece, Miami, and so many more. The locations are never just a background. They help shape the feel of each film. They carry atmosphere, character, and a sense of movement that makes the world feel wide and constantly changing.

That was a huge part of the magic for me.

Watching Bond move through all of those environments exposed me to different languages, colors, landscapes, and cultures long before I had any real means of getting to them myself. The films created curiosity first. Travel came later.

Moments That Are Stamps in Time

One thing I have always loved about the Bond series is how it captures moments in time.

When you watch an older Bond film now, you are not just watching a story unfold. You are seeing places as they once were. Jamaica in the 1960s. Istanbul decades ago. Cold War Europe. Italy in a different cinematic era. Those films accidentally became time capsules as much as they were entertainment.

That is something I have come to value deeply in travel as well.

The places we go, the people we meet, and the moments we experience all become markers in time. They are not just memories. They are proof that we were there in a specific moment, seeing a place as it was, feeling a place as it moved through our lives. That is one of the parallels I have always felt between Bond and travel. The experience leaves a trace.

Traveling is one of the greatest blessings any human can have having the opportunity to go out in the world and literally learn more in one moment than 6 months in a classroom could teach.

Going Where Bond Went

As I started traveling more over the past ten years, something funny began to happen. I started reaching places that Bond had reached first in my imagination.

At first, I did not think too much of it. Then I realized how many of these locations were overlapping with my own life. Jamaica. Istanbul. Meteora. Prague. The Bahamas. Amsterdam. Places I had already seen through Bond films were becoming real under my own feet.

That added another layer to the experience. Not because I was trying to live out some fantasy, but because it showed me how deeply those films had shaped my curiosity from the very beginning. These were not random destinations to me. Some part of me had already been carrying them for years.

Here are just a few Bond-connected places I have been able to experience for myself:

• Dunn’s River Falls, Jamaica – Dr. No
• Amsterdam, Netherlands – Diamonds Are Forever
• Danube House, Prague – Casino Royale
• Rose Island, Bahamas – Thunderball
• Basilica Cistern, Istanbul – From Russia With Love
• Istanbul rooftops – Skyfall
• Meteora, Greece – For Your Eyes Only

And even with that list, it still feels like only a small fraction of the Bond world I have yet to see.

Dunns River Falls, Jamaica – Dr. No (1962)

Amsterdam, Netherlands – Diamonds Are Forever (1971)

Danube House, Prague, Czechia – Casino Royale (2006)

Rose Island, Bahamas – Thunderball (1964)

Basilica Cistern – From Russia With Love (1963)

Istanbul, Turkey – Skyfall (2012)

Meteora, Greece – For Your Eyes Only (1981)

More Than a Film Series

Some people have Harry Potter. Others have Star Wars. I love Star Wars too, but my series has always been James Bond.

Looking back now at more than two decades of watching these films, I can clearly see that they shaped me in ways I never could have understood as a kid. They did not just entertain me. They made the world feel reachable. They made it feel layered, mysterious, and worth stepping into.

That early curiosity eventually became something real. It became my own movement through the world. Only instead of missions tied to espionage, my mission became learning through culture, people, story, and place.

That is the difference now. The curiosity stayed the same, but the purpose evolved.

For me, James Bond was never just about suits, Aston Martins, gadgets, or gun barrel sequences.. It’s the motion, the settings, and the way every story seemed to open another door into somewhere new and unfamiliar.

That is what sparked something in me at seven years old. And is what continues to inspire my voyaging all these years later.

It made me want to go, to see, to move and to understand the world beyond where I started. And over time, that curiosity stopped being fantasy and became the life I actually began living.

So yes, in a very real way, James Bond helped make me a world traveler. And for that, I will always be grateful.

If you want to see the vlog version of this reflection, I also recorded and edited a companion video around the release of No Time To Die.