On the road (1) – Six countries, nine days COMPLETED - Page 33 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
As of January 1, 2019, we have closed our forums. This is a decision we did not come to lightly, but it is necessary. The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk. The server software itself must be updated, and it cannot be without removing the forums.
So it is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to our long-running forums. They came online in 2000 and brought together so many wonderful Disney fans. We had friendships form, careers launch, couples marry, children born ... all because of this amazing community.
Thank you to each of you who were a part of this community. You made it possible.
And a very special thank you to our Guides (moderators), past and present, who kept our forums a happy place to be. You are the glue that held everything together, and we are forever grateful to you. Thank you aliceinwdw, Caldercup, MrsM, WillCAD, Fortissimo, GingerJ, HiddenMickey, CRCrazy, Eeyoresmom, disneyknut, disneydani, Cam22, chezp, WDWfan, Luvsun, KMB733, rescuesk, OhToodles!, Colexis Mom, lfredsbo, HiddenMickey, DrDolphin, DopeyGirl, duck addict, Disneybine, PixieMichele, Sandra Bostwick, Eeyore Tattoo, DyanKJ130, Suzy Q'Disney, LilMarcieMouse, AllisonG, Belle*, Chrissi, Brant, DawnDenise, Crystalloubear, Disneymom9092, FanOfMickey, Goofy4Goofy, GoofyMom, Home4us123, iamgrumpy, ilovedisney247, Jennifer2003, Jenny Pooh, KrisLuvsDisney, Ladyt, Laughaholic88, LauraBelle Hime, Lilianna, LizardCop, Loobyoxlip, lukeandbrooksmom, marisag, michnash, MickeyMAC, OffKilter_Lynn, PamelaK, Poor_Eeyore, ripkensnana, RobDVC, SHEANA1226, Shell of the South, snoozin, Statelady01, Tara O'Hara, tigger22, Tink and Co., Tinkerbelz, WDWJAMBA, wdwlovers, Wendyismyname, whoSEZ, WildforWD, and WvuGrrrl. You made the magic.
We want to personally thank Sara Varney, who coordinated our community for many years (among so many other things she did for us), and Cheryl Pendry, our Message Board Manager who helped train our Guides, and Ginger Jabour, who helped us with the PassPorter-specific forums and Live! Guides. Thank you for your time, energy, and enthusiasm. You made it all happen.
There are other changes as well.
Why? Well, the world has changed. And change with it, we must. The lyrics to "We Go On" for IllumiNations say it best:
We go on to the joy and through the tears
We go on to discover new frontiers
Moving on with the current of the years.
We go on
Moving forward now as one
Moving on with a spirit born to run
Ever on with each rising sun.
To a new day, we go on.
It's time to move on and move forward.
PassPorter is a small business, and for many years it supported our family. But the world changed, print books took a backseat to the Internet, and for a long time now it has been unable to make ends meet. We've had to find new ways to support our family, which means new careers and less and less time available to devote to our first baby, PassPorter.
But eventually, we must move on and move forward. It is the right thing to do.
So we are retiring this newsletter, as we simply cannot keep up with it. Many thanks to Mouse Fan Travel who supported it all these years, to All Ears and MousePlanet who helped us with news, to our many article contributors, and -- most importantly -- to Sara Varney who edited our newsletter so wonderfully for years and years.
And we are no longer charging for the Live Guides. If you have a subscription, it's yours to keep for the lifetime of the Live Guides at no additional cost. The Live Guides will stay online, barring server issues and technical problems, for all of 2019.
That said, PassPorter is not going away. Most of the resources will remain online for as long as we can support them, and after that we will find ways to make whatever we can available. PassPorter means a great deal to us, and to many of you, and we will do our best to keep it alive in whatever way we can. Our server costs are high, and they'll need to come out of our pockets, so in the future you can expect some changes so we can bring those costs down.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for your amazing support over the years. Without you, there's no way us little guys could have made something like this happen and given the "big guys" a run for their money. PassPorter was consistently the #3 guidebook after the Unofficial and Official guides, which was really unheard of for such a small company to do. We ROCKED it thanks to you and your support and love!
If you miss us, you can still find some of us online. Sara started a new blog at DisneyParkPrincess.com -- I strongly urge you to visit and get on her mailing list. She IS the Disney park princess and knows Disney backward and forward. And I am blogging as well at JenniferMaker.com, which is a little craft blog I started a couple of years ago to make ends meet. You can see and hear me in my craft show at https://www.youtube.com/c/jennifermaker . Many PassPorter readers and fans are on Facebook, in groups they formed like the PassPorter Trip Reports and PassPorter Crafting Challenge (if you join, just let them know you read about it in the newsletter). And some of our most devoted community members started a forum of their own at Pixie Dust Lane and all are invited over.
So we encourage you to stay in touch with us and your fellow community members wherever works best for you!
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Those doors that lead down are interesting. Did you go into any of them? The one looked like it was a shop, but I would think it'd be like going into a cellar.
We didn't go into any of them, but some of them were definitely shops.
Tuesday 23 March – part three: bear pits in the heart of a city
The walk was all because I wanted to see the Barengraben or bear pits. The bear has a very special place in the heart of Bern. When the duke who first founded the city arrived, he declared that it would be named after the first animal he killed in his next hunt. That was a bear and that’s where the name came from. Everywhere you look, you see the bear, with it prominent in the city crest. I found it a really nice touch.
I’ll be honest, as we got to the bear pits, I had mixed feelings about it. The bears certainly had a large area to walk around and there’s definitely a history to it, but I still felt a bit uneasy about it.
What helped to take my mind off it were the stunning views back towards the centre of Bern, which were just lovely.
We headed back, with me taking a different route, so that we’d see more of the city and wouldn’t get bored seeing the same things as we’d seen on the way down. I figured, with more to look at, we wouldn’t notice the walk as much, and to a great extent, that theory worked.
As we headed up the road, we saw the city’s cathedral, Munster St. Vinzenz, which is the most recent of Switzerland’s gothic cathedrals. Sadly, like many other cathedrals we’d seen since we’d been here, it was under restoration. It’s good, especially as the work is no doubt needed, but it obviously spoils our photos.
We walked around the cathedral and took various photos overlooking the old town and the river beneath us, which was very low. And all this after Mark had been saying earlier in the trip how well Switzerland seemed to be doing for water. Maybe not...
From there, we wandered back past the entrance to the cathedral and then headed back to the car.
The parking all paid for and we then negotiated our way out of the confusing car park. On its uppermost level, it’s home to Hertz car rental and a gas station – I kid you not! We drove round once, before working out where the exit actually was...
We headed out of Bern, with the aim of heading south, but sadly the first destination I programmed Tim with, he managed to pick the wrong place, which was to the north of Bern. A bit of re-programming later and we were on the right track.
We got to our next stop of Thun very quickly, much more quickly than I expected. We drove round, seeing the town and its castle, which was very picturesque.
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What an interesting little city. The photos of the mountains are beautiful. Well, all the photos are beautiful!!!! But as I look at the city ones, I forget that you were in the midst of the mountains.
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