On the road (3) A (hopefully) sunny September road trip to Spain COMPLETED - Page 16 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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.
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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.
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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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Well I'm late to the party but at least I made it before it was over. What a great road trip. It makes me want to take one --- some day. Amazing photos as usual!
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Monday 6 September – part five: are these roadworks ever going to stop?
The first sight I had wanted to see was the Arco de Santa Maria, which is a gateway carved with statues of various local worthies.
Passing underneath there, I got some more shots underneath it...
... then it was into the courtyard beyond the cathedral is the focal point here. Indeed, it’s pretty much the focal point for the whole city, as you can see from the size of it:
It’s Spain’s third largest cathedral and was founded in 1221. Its construction took three centuries in total and was carried out over many phases. Of course, with Mark waiting in the car in a restricted area, I didn’t have time to go in and explore it, but from the outside, it certainly was spectacular.
I headed back towards the car, carefully negotiating my way around the various beggars. Just in that short five minute walk in Burgos, I probably saw more beggars than I had to date in the whole trip.
Then we were off again...
We liked this idea, so everyone knew when the lights would change
We headed next for Segovia, with the route taking us along the motorway from Burgos to Madrid. Oh my goodness, they were doing some serious work along here. The journey went along these lines: roadworks for a few miles, sometimes just down to one lane on our own side of the road, sometimes sharing the road with the ongoing traffic, with one carriageway closed for them to work on, then a few miles of no roadworks, then back into them again. Honestly, it was like this for probably about 40 or 50 miles, so it did get very wearing after a while.
In the distance, we could see a range of mountains and I got to wondering if Madrid would be behind them, particularly as no matter how far we travelled, we never seemed to get any nearer to them.
That was quite the cathedral! Too bad you didn't get to explore it properly. I LIKE that timer on the traffic lights! Of course, you would still have idiots trying to beat it, but the normal people would make the traffic flow a lot better! Sometimes it seems that they block off so much highway for construction, and just work on a very small portion of it at a time. I s'pose we have to give them the benefit of the doubt that they know what they're doing, but, I'm with you, it IS frustrating at times!
They have timers like that on lights in a few places I've been - but can't remember which countries now! I believe China has them. I've always thought they were a great idea, and not sure why we don't see them in the US. Some US lights will have a timer for the walk sign to show how long you have left to cross the street, but not for the automobile stop lights.
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