Sun and sightseeing in Spain COMPLETE - Page 5 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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I don't know how I missed your trip report. The villa is beautiful. Too bad the fountain doesn't work anymore. Your pictures are wonderful.. Can't wait to read more.
Liz
All I can say is, WOW, what a beautiful place!
Your pictures are wonderful!
The two of you are my travel idols as you take the best trips!
Thanks for sharing!
It was a leisurely start to the day, even though I was up far too early for my liking! After breakfast, we eventually headed out at about 9am. Our first stop was to get a newspaper and some more postcards and stamps, which also allowed me to post the ones I’d written yesterday.
Then it was off to Altea market. We’d been told that this would be busy with literally hundreds of market stalls, selling things like handbags, belts, clothes and kitchen ware. It turned out to be a great find and we were able to find a couple of Christmas presents, as well as some items for us. We just got into trouble for not haggling with the traders, but my goodness, the prices were too good to worry about that! I got a pair of white shoes for 6 Euros (about £4.80), Mark picked up a belt for about 10 Euros (£8) and we also got some lovely Mediterranean style items for the kitchen, including an olive oil sprinkler and some dishes for dips to go in. I can’t wait to use those.
As we browsed and as I tried on shoes, I got exceptionally hot. I could feel myself overheating, just as I had in Florida, before I passed on. I didn’t want to play that game again and quickly sat down and fortunately started to cool down. After that, it wasn’t long before we headed back to the air conditioning of the car, which was a great relief. So much for the weather forecast today! I’d logged on to the Internet earlier on in the day using my BlackBerry and discovered that we were meant to get light drizzle. Yeah, right. Nice to know the forecast over here is as accurate as it is back home.
As we drove through Altea itself, we passed the railway station and one of the town’s churches – a lot of churches over here have blue roofs, so they’re easy to spot.
We headed for Benidorm, a Mecca for British holidaymakers and a resort with – how shall we say? – not the best reputation. It used to be that if you wanted a loud, raucous holiday with lots of cheap drink, this was the place to head for. It’s clear though, that in recent years, the resort has done a lot to shake off that image and it’s starting to get there. There’s a lot of work going on to improve the environment. We saw some fairly major roadworks and, from what had been completed, the area looked a lot better once it was all finished.
Our destination here was the four star Bali Hotel, which Dave and Barb had stayed at before and it was a stunning place. The lobby was very impressive:
After a very important restroom stop (let’s just say one of our party needed that more than the others! ), it was outside to have a drink and enjoy the sunshine.
I couldn’t believe how quiet it was outside. There were only about three people in the pool and the whole hotel seemed to be deserted. It just fitted our theory that the whole area was very quiet at the moment and not exactly packed with tourists.
We were here for one main reason – to go up to the panoramic viewing area on the 43rd floor. You get there by taking one of the elevators and we waited for one of the ones that runs up the outside of the building. There was only one operating, so it was a wait, but it was worth it for the views you get on the way up there.
Again, the thing that struck me was how the various hotel pools were deserted, but then again, they are very overlooked and I’m not sure I’d like to go in them, knowing how many rooms would be able to see you. That’s the beauty with Mark’s parents’ villa – the swimming pool is completely surrounded by trees and isn’t overlooked at all, so you have no worry with that at all.
When we got up there, we paid our 5 Euros (£4) to look at the views – it’s 1 Euro if you’re a paying guest and it’s worth the price. You can see all of Benidorm laid out before you and even as far as Calpe, just up the coast from Moraira. It was interesting to see how the place had developed, with lots of high rise hotels and apartments that obviously dated from the 1970s, which is when the resort first started to become popular – certainly with the Brits. The beach was absolutely stunning and you could see why so many people have flocked here over the years. I don’t know why, but I wasn’t expecting the beach to be as long and as wide as it was. And, again there was lots of greenery everywhere as you looked towards the mountains. I don’t know how the vegetation manages it over here in such a hot and dry climate.
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The lobby was very impressive:
), it was outside to have a drink and enjoy the sunshine. 
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