On the road (1) – Six countries, nine days COMPLETED - Page 37 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Amazing!!! As I'm reading your recap, I can't believe how much driving and sights you saw in just one day. That sure was a lot of photos for one day!! Lucerne is beautiful, one gorgeous building after another. And I'm glad you got to see some real live cows!!
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Today we drove 177 miles. The weather today was warm and sunny, with temperatures in the 70s. The best thing today was the beautiful buildings in Lucerne. The worst thing today was how high we were on the road from Interlaken to Lucerne. Today we tried going to Bern And the result was and it doesn’t feel like a capital city. The most magical moment today was seeing Lake Geneva first thing in Montreux.
I can't believe all of this was ONE day! It seems like you saw and did so much!
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Absolutely gorgeous! I love the building with the crests and tree painted on it. How lovely!
I really enjoy all the history that you put in this TR. It's not just "hey here's some cool pictures", there's actually detail that you put in there, so I feel like I'm learning something, but in an enjoyable way, lol!
So sad about the fire. Losing pieces of history like that is terribly sad. I'm glad they were able to salvage SOME of it though. I guess that's better than a total loss.
I really can't wait to go over there, and to go to Switzerland. I have a friend who has family in Switzerland and they have an apartment somewhere there (I can't remember what city but I'll ask) and they've invited us to come on over with them some time next year. I wouldn't have said no regardless, but I DEFINITELY won't say no after seeing these photos! LOVELY!
I'm glad you're enjoying the history. I do always try and add that in, as I figure it's better to put the information in, rather than assuming people know what I've learnt from my trusty guidebooks.
Just catching up ! Photos have been fabulous. I wouldn't be able to get enough of the water views with the mountains in the background. Your sunset shots were Wonderful. The covered bridge is amazing such a shame about the fire.
My DD would love the green walls in the hotel room. I'm wondering what was hanging off the pillows?
I don't know what to call it - it's something you find in hotel rooms occasionally, it's like a wrap round the pillow that you just take off it. It's purely for decoration.
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Cheryl! Your report has made me so happy!! I just saw the title and thought "that sounds fun" so I started reading. Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather when I got to the pictures of the Hotel Dieu. I have pictures that look JUST LIKE yours from a trip I took with my dad in 1995, and I (being a genius 15 yr old) never recorded what it was. I have looked at the pictures many times and always thought it was such a beautiful place. I was just sort of tagging along on a business trip with my dad, and he travels all over the world all the time, so it didn't really stick out in his memory as to what it was either. Anyway, thanks to your trip report now I know!! Great reporting!! Now I have to neglect my work some more (haha) and go read the rest of it!
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Cheryl! Your report has made me so happy!! I just saw the title and thought "that sounds fun" so I started reading. Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather when I got to the pictures of the Hotel Dieu. I have pictures that look JUST LIKE yours from a trip I took with my dad in 1995, and I (being a genius 15 yr old) never recorded what it was. I have looked at the pictures many times and always thought it was such a beautiful place. I was just sort of tagging along on a business trip with my dad, and he travels all over the world all the time, so it didn't really stick out in his memory as to what it was either. Anyway, thanks to your trip report now I know!! Great reporting!! Now I have to neglect my work some more (haha) and go read the rest of it!
Wednesday 24 March – part one: some seriously awesome restrooms!
We were up early this morning, after waking up at around 6.40. There was good reason though, as I figured that I needed to wash my hair and wanted time to allow it to dry. It also gave me time to spend on the boards, which was no bad thing...
We munched on our pain au chocolate and croissant au chocolate that we’d bought yesterday and they were very nice. Certainly much better than paying the stupid price they were charging for breakfast here!
We got going not much after 8.30. I checked out and was served by someone wearing various different badges, indicating that was fluent in German, English, French and Italian – not a bad score.
I don’t think I mentioned it when we arrived here last night, but all the doors from the car park to the elevators and stairs are automatic, which was a bit freaky. It’s just as well I knew about the second one as well, as you really need to stand back from it to avoid being hit in the face by it!
We headed out and after Tim eventually got going – poor guy sulked when he couldn’t find a satellite, we were on our way.
We were expecting the traffic to be really bad, as we were driving in rush hour, but actually it wasn’t too bad out there. We were pleasantly surprised and some made it to the main railway station, which is where our main tour would be departing from.
The next problem was to find a car park and, after a couple of abortive attempts, because the parking spots would only let you park for a couple of hours and we’d need much longer than that, we found an underground car park.
Honestly, I do not know why we don’t have underground car parks like this at home. This had the same sensor system that we’d seen in Bern yesterday and previously in Spain, indicating which bays were free, with clear markings as to where pedestrians should walk and really good lighting. Mark also pointed out the sprinkler system above each car. The elevators were glass as well. We were really impressed with it.
I couldn’t resist getting some photos of the various licence plates, as I love the way that they all have the Swiss national flag on them, along with the individual canton’s (region/state) flag too. Apologies to all the Swiss drivers whose plates I photographed.
We came out of there and walked up to the main station. As we’d driven past it, we’d both commented on how close the railway platforms were to the road. Literally, you have trains pulling up right alongside you as you drive past. You’d never get that at home. : This place is absolutely huge – think Grand Central Station in New York and you get the idea.
We found the tourist office and asked there where we needed to pick our tour up from. But, before we did that, we had a more urgent mission – the restrooms. We found them, but you had to pay for them. Talk about sexual discrimination, it only cost Mark 1CHF ($0.95) to use the facilities, but it cost me 2CHF. ($1.90) I had to wait for him, as I’d assumed it would be the same cost, but not a bit of it. : Having said that, there were very, very nice facilities, as I can prove from this sneaky photo Mark took. Look at the mood lighting in there!
The girl at the tourist office had explained that our pick-up point was just behind the station and we found it easily enough, getting some photos of the Swiss National Museum on the way. It was the closest we got to it this trip... maybe some other time, as I think it’s fair to say that we had both agreed that one trip to Switzerland would not be enough for us. :
We got on board our old trolley bus for our city tour of Zurich and set off, seeing the main shopping street first, Bahnhofstrasse. For this early part of the tour, we were inside and taking photos wasn’t that easy, because of the glare on the windows and, at some points, we also discovered how dirty the windows were with the sun on them.
Fortunately, our first stop wasn’t far off, which was by Zurichsee, allowing us to get some photos of the lake that Zurich is on and back towards the city itself. We were later to learn that it was something like 40 miles long and five miles wide at its widest point. They don’t do lakes by half here in Switzerland. We also learnt that the water is almost good enough to drink from it, as there are laws prohibiting any sewage or waste water from going into it, which is good to hear.
Me hard at work on postcards.... ... and Mark relaxing!
Imagine that! The Gray Line is be an international company, I didn't know that! Interesting fact about the cleanliness of the lake, especially one that size!
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I do always try and add that in, as I figure it's better to put the information in, rather than assuming people know what I've learnt from my trusty guidebooks. 
Great reporting!!
Now I have to neglect my work some more (haha) and go read the rest of it!
: This place is absolutely huge – think Grand Central Station in New York and you get the idea. 
Melanie
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