A Baltic boating adventure TRIP REPORT COMPLETED 11/19 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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.
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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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Saturday 11 June – part twelve: these were put up in just 40 minutes
We headed off again, seeing some more sights on the way, and everyone was very taken by the name of this restaurant. Elena told us it was a vegetarian restaurant (sounded good to me), so of course the jokes related to the idea that you were an idiot if you came here expecting to eat meat.
Our next stop was the St. Isaac’s Cathedral that we'd photographed from some distance earlier, and I was glad we had, as we were literally dropped right off by the door. It was quite an imposing place from outside...
Elena told us that these great columns were put up in just 40 minutes... Inside, she explained how, with the use of this model. It was basically a pulley system, from what I could gather, with heaps of men turning the wheels on one side to bring the columns into place. I bet that was something to see, and I doubt we could columns of such magnitude in that quickly even today.
It was once again beautifully decorated, and Elena had warned us that you couldn't judge any building in St. Petersburg from the outside, as often the interior wasn't what you expected, and I was starting to see what she meant...
St. Issac’s is one of the world’s largest cathedrals and was designed in 1818 by a then unknown architect. I have to confess I still don’t really know the name – Auguste de Montferrand. The building work was obviously a massive piece of work, as it opened 40 years later in 1858. During the Communist era, it survived, which was a surprise, given their views on religion, but it was used as a museum of atheism during this time. Ironic, huh?
Elena explained that these doors are normally supposed to be closed, and only opened during services, as the priest emerges from here. However, as there's now very rarely a service in here and it's mainly open for visitors, they just keep them open all the time, so you can see the stained glass window behind them.
We headed off again, and passed the Admiralty building once more...
... and went over the River Neva..
It may not have been a live one, but I saw a Russian cow.
As you can see from some of these shots, the rain was now getting heavier, which was a shame, but at least it had been dry for the majority of the day.
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Elena told us it was a vegetarian restaurant (sounded good to me), so of course the jokes related to the idea that you were an idiot if you came here expecting to eat meat. 
The building work was obviously a massive piece of work, as it opened 40 years later in 1858. During the Communist era, it survived, which was a surprise, given their views on religion, but it was used as a museum of atheism during this time. Ironic, huh? 
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