My grandparents, Bill and Betty, have been avid travelers for as long as I can remember. When they returned from various far-off lands with colorful stories and pictures, I would promise myself that I would travel there too. As luck would have it, graduate school was a welcome agent of travel. I would pitch conferences in other countries to my advisor and cross my fingers that the travel scholarships would come in so I could share my research abroad.
After one of my trips, I was sharing my own travel pictures, and we realized that I had captured a photo of the Chapel Bridge in Lucerne, Switzerland that they had visited years before. Even more exciting, Grandad had painted the Chapel Bridge.
Years after their trip, I had ended up in exactly the same spot. Although the Chapel Bridge is one of the most famous landmarks in Lucerne, and I was bound to end up there, it still seems like a special kind of deja vu.
It's hard to tell in my photo, but the bridge has changed a lot since Grandad painted it. In August of 1993, a large portion of the bridge was tragically lost to fire. The two bridgeheads and the water tower were spared, and the bridge was repaired in record time. Unfortunately, many of the original paintings that had decorated the inside of the bridge since the 1600s were lost or damaged in the fire.
You can read more about the Chapel Bridge here: https://www.luzern.com/en/highlights/the-city/lucernes-landmarks-the-chapel-bridge/.
I started this portfolio and blog as a way to preserve and share my Grandad's artwork and to hear more of my grandparents stories that he captured in watercolor. I hope you'll join me on this travel of another kind.
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