On the road (3) A (hopefully) sunny September road trip to Spain COMPLETED - Page 51 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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!
Welcome! We're happy you've found the PassPorter Community -- the friendliest place to plan your vacation to Walt Disney World, Disney Cruise Line, Disneyland, and the world in general! You are now viewing the PassPorter Message Board Community as a guest, which gives you limited access. As our guest, feel free to browse our messages by selecting the forum you want to visit from the list below.
To post messages and ask questions, join our FREE community today and you'll get access to tools and resources not available to guests, such as our vacation countown timers, "living" avatars, private messaging system, database searches, downloads, and a special PassPorter discount code. Registration is fast, simple, and completely free. Just click the Join Our Community link.
If you think you've already joined, log in below now. If you don't remember your member name or password, please visit our Member Name and Password Recovery page. You are also welcome to contact us.
So sad this TR is coming to an end. Glad you made it around the AdT circle. I don't know if I would have tried that (and I'm from New Jersey, one of the worst places for circles). I remeber visiting Paris and was very thankful they had the underground walkways for the pedestrians as there is NO WAY you could cross that roadway on foot. Your description reminds me of European Vacation when the Griswalds get stuck in London, "Big Ben, Parliment".
I remeber visiting Paris and was very thankful they had the underground walways for the pedistrians as there is NO WAY you could cross that roadway on foot.
You are so right! There's no way we'd ever attempt to cross that road... :nO:
Registered Message Board Members Get Our Free Newsletter! When you register you'll have the option to sign up for our weekly PassPorter Newsletter. It's chock-full of feature articles; news; tips; contests; photos; and special offers in our online store.
As this is part three of the three various road trips we’ve taken this year, I decided to do things a bit differently this time. Rather than do a wrap-up of each individual trip, I thought I’d do my final thoughts once we’d finished our explorations of Europe, as all three trips were similar, in that we were driving through various parts of Europe. Of course, each was very different as well.
Between them, these trips have allowed to visit a total of seven European countries, all for varying lengths of time:
Austria
Belgium
France
Germany
Holland
Spain
Switzerland
Not bad at all! Of those, I’d never been to Austria in my life before and, although we only passed through for half an hour, at least now I can say that I’ve been there. With Switzerland, I’d only been as a baby, so I had no recollection at all of it. The last time we were in Holland was for our second wedding anniversary in 2001 when we went to Amsterdam for the day, while our previous visit to Germany had really consisted of a weekend in Berlin and a school exchange I did as a teenager, but that doesn’t really count, as I can’t even remember where we went.
We had of course visited France and Spain before, but hadn’t travelled much in either, considering the size of them and how near to the UK they are. By the end of the three trips, all of which involved at least a couple of days in France, according to my DK guidebook (and they are, after all, my travel bibles outside of PassPorter ), we had visited 13 of France’s 15 regions – at least the regions they divide the country up into anyway. Before this year, we’d only visited four regions in total, which gives you an idea of how much of the country we saw.
It really is a vast country and with so many wonderful places to see. I have no doubt that we’ll be returning to many of the places we saw, most notably:
Bordeaux, which was such a beautiful city
The Loire Valley, as there are many more chateaux to explore yet
Normandy, to see more of its Second World War history
Carcassonne, as I could happily call in there on any trip to dine and enjoy the scenery
The Dordogne Valley, as there are more beautiful towns and amazing caves to see there.
Versailles, as heck, we’ve got to see the fountains properly one day
The bits that I feel we’ve done justice to and don’t need to see again are pretty much Lyon, which we didn’t feel the love for, and Grenoble, where my interest was mainly the teleferique, which is now complete.
As for Spain, again using the DK system of regions in Spain, before this latest trip, we’d only visited two areas, focusing on just the south eastern coast of the country. Following this trip, we could add in another four regions, Madrid, the Basque Country, Castilla y Leon and Castilla-La Mancha, so we’d certainly seen a lot more of the country. We were pleasantly surprised by the beauty of the Basque Country and its resemblance to the hills we’d seen in Switzerland. It was truly beautiful, although the guidebooks surprisingly didn’t focus on it more. We’d love to go back to Burgos and see it properly and could easily spend more time in Madrid.
Of course, we’ll return to Mark’s parents’ villa, although when is a moot point right now, with a Disney trip in the works for April 2011 and plans for a three week vacation, including the Alaskan cruise with Disney in fall 2011. Even with our generous holiday allowance and our week’s vacation to Egypt, we don’t have a lot of vacation left. Maybe just a quick weekend there at some point....
Harking back to the earlier vacation, where we also visited Germany and Switzerland, looking first at the larger of the two – Germany.
Again, using my tried and trusted method of assessing countries in terms of my beloved DK guidebooks, before this trip, we’d only visited one region of the country, but the road trip added in another three regions. It may not sound like much, but my goodness, the regions in this country are absolutely huge. At least now we can say that we’ve explored Western Germany anyway! We saw some beautiful cities on the way, including Stuttgart, Frankfurt and Koln and, of those, the latter was our favourite – not all because of the Lindt chocolate factory and its wonderful mint chocolate liquor, but that’s part of the attraction. Spending time with Sabine and Manuel in their country was great fun and it was lovely to see them both again.
I have to finish with Switzerland, as this was, to both of us, the revelation of all the countries we visited during the three trips. Don’t get me wrong, we saw some amazing places in France, Germany and Spain, but Switzerland absolutely stole our hearts.
We made it through every region and city mentioned in the DK guidebook, which was pretty impressive. We’re already looking at a return journey back there, perhaps in fall 2012, as we loved it so much and there’s so much we still didn’t see. Highlights for us were:
Geneva, a beautiful city and one we’d like to see without the rain
Zurich, so much to see and so little time
Lucerne, much more beautiful than we could have imagined
Interlaken and its surrounding countryside, with its beautiful lakes and amazing, winding roads
Montreux, this was the true gem for us, a stunning, stunning lakeside resort, capped off by the sight of the snow-capped mountains all around it
Talking of weather, we really lucked out with weather throughout our trip, with the notable exception of some of our stay at Disneyland Paris, although we’ve learnt over the years that cold and rain seems to follow every trip we take there. Having said that, we did see some good weather there. We experienced a lot more heat than we’d have expected at pretty much every stop. Normandy was blazing hot on the first day of that trip, while we certainly got the high temperatures in Bordeaux and at the villa. And as for Switzerland, who’d have thought we’d have got temperatures well into the 70s there in March, with snow still on top of the mountains?
With a road trip, you’re visiting cities that, in our case certainly, we’d never visited before and that presented a challenge when it came to booking hotels. Wherever we could, we booked either Hilton or Holiday Inn group hotels, as we’re loyalty members of both and we stayed at some wonderful hotels from both groups, with the upgraded room at the Crowne Plaza in Toulouse, the executive level room at the Hilton at Madrid Airport, the Hilton in Frankfurt and, of course, the Triannon Palace in Versailles springing instantly to mind.
For a lot of our travels though, we struggled to find places to stay, as the Hilton group don’t have many hotels in France or Spain and often the reviews weren’t that great for Holiday Inn options, so Trip Advisor became my best friend in planning these vacations, as we headed for towns, cities and villages, where I hadn’t got a clue where to stay. In the main, with only one exception (our stay in Rocamadour ), we found some real winners. Some places were quirky (Montreux in Switzerland springs to mind), some were great finds (the chateau we stayed in near Chenonceau), some were great value (Altos in France and Onda in Spain), while others were very plush and for not too much money (Bordeaux in France). All in all, I’d thoroughly recommend this as a way to find hotels in places you’re not familiar with. I am now a firm fan of this site!
As we went through the trips, we learnt a lot. We were fairly well equipped in terms of what we needed to drive abroad, but we quickly learnt what else we needed to take. DVDs came on later trips for the hotels that didn’t have English channels or for when we got bored of non-stop news channels. We also learnt to take lots of water and snacks with us and, from the first trip, where the budget was dramatically overspent, thanks to lots of (admittedly very good!) meals at hotel restaurants, a bit more research went into trying to find restaurants outside hotels that would generally be cheaper. We also learnt our lesson from that fateful day in June when we struggled to find a restaurant that was open on a Sunday in France and ensured that the hotel we’d be staying at on our next trip had a restaurant that would be open that day.
The programming of all of the trips worked out pretty well, with me learning as we went, as to how much time to allow for each place we visited and how much driving to do each day. Although we had long journeys, I think they were broken up fine and Mark seemed to agree with that. I did feel bad leaving all the driving to him, but before you feel bad for him, remember that was the deal before we started any of these and he loves driving. He is also the world’s worst passenger in a car!
I guess it’ll be a long time before we plan anymore road trips, although there will certainly be an element of that in the fall 2011 trip that’s in the works... All in all, they’ve been great fun and a real eye opener, giving us a great opportunity to see a lot more of the continent we live in. I’m ashamed that, until a few months ago, we’d seen so little of Europe, but this year, we’ve certainly put that right and it’s been a great experience.
The next great experience will be a real must-do for both of us and something we’ve wanted to do for a long time, visiting the pyramids and more in Egypt! We can’t wait and it’ll take us on our first joint visit into a new continent, Africa, and of course there’ll be a trip report on that in due course... until then, it’s time to get off the road...
Great finish, Cheryl! You have certainly given me a wonderful tour of places I will probably never see, but have heard of my whole life, some of which are important in my heritage.
If Brenda and I were to do a road trip, or three, of that magnitude, I would probably do all the driving as well, as I like to drive. As a "professional" driver, I commend Mark for his driving abilities and I would co-drive with him anytime!
Thanks for sharing all the photos and histories of the many places you visited, it was so interesting and educational at the same time. I will miss the nightly "chezp" updates!
Great wrap up Cheryl. I enjoyed reading all your trip eports this year and getting a tour of Europe. All of the pictures were beautiful and I got to see what other places look like.
Liz
Great wrap up Cheryl. I loved all the reports - don't forget the Florida road trip last year too. I'm really looking forward to hearing all about Egypt and nice to hear you will be Stateside again in 2011. Until next report - take care
Thanks for yet another wonderful trip report full of wonderful detail and photos! I hope that I'll have a chance to see some of what you've seen, but until then, I'm thoroughly enjoying seeing things through your eyes (and Mark's!).
I'm always curious about the sights in and around your home. Someday I would love to see a mini trip report of you just "hanging out" in your own town. It may seem day-to-day to you, but I'm sure that there's way more history in and around your home town than I see in mine (Southern California, where anything more than 50 years is OLD!)!
Thanks again! I'm already looking forward to your 2011 trips!
__________________
Huge Disney Fan...Always Have Been...Always Will Be!
Disneyland 60th Anniversary Celebration TR here!
2013 WDW trip here!
2011 trip to Hawaii here!
Registered Message Board Members save 30% off PassPorter guidebooks! When you register you'll have access to a discount coupon good for 30% off the list price of PassPorter books in our online store.
About This Page: 
Holly: 
Like
Thank
Pixie Dust
PassPorter Guide Author
There's no way we'd ever attempt to cross that road... :nO:
Of those, I’d never been to Austria in my life before and, although we only passed through for half an hour, at least now I can say that I’ve been there. 
All in all, they’ve been great fun and a real eye opener, giving us a great opportunity to see a lot more of the continent we live in. I’m ashamed that, until a few months ago, we’d seen so little of Europe, but this year, we’ve certainly put that right and it’s been a great experience. 
We can’t wait and it’ll take us on our first joint visit into a new continent, Africa, and of course there’ll be a trip report on that in due course... until then, it’s time to get off the road... 
Thanks for taking us along for the ride! 
Linear Mode
