On the road (1) – Six countries, nine days COMPLETED - Page 49 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Mark had the rack of lamb with baked potato, which rolled up complete with cream cheese on top of it and he was very happy with it. Having seen all about the making of Dolly the sheep, the world’s first cloned sheep at the Mercedes-Benz Museum earlier, there were lots of jokes about it being Dolly.
You guys are cruel. It's almost as bad as eating fish at the Coral Reef in Epcot when they're swimming right past you!
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Wow, I have a hard time getting into our pool when it's 80 degrees. Sounds like your pool was much cooler then that. I think the perfect temp is around 84. Looking forward to more!
Sorry you had so many issues with the credit card today, the castle response sounded even crazier, they could take the credit card for the book but not the tickets then they could take it
Definitely looked like a stormy day but wonderful pictures anyway, I really liked this picture it is just so cool seeing the old world and the new world side by side
Sorry the service at dinner was not so great, first no soup, then the wait...glad that the entrees at least made it worthwhile.
Saturday 27 March – part one: the centre of this city is stunning!
We were up reasonably early and headed downstairs to get breakfast. Fortunately, our last two nights, we were staying at Hiltons, with breakfast included in the price. As we got there, a woman was saying she’d forgotten how good the breakfast here was, so we knew we were in for a treat and we were! As well as hot selections, there was fruit, cold meat, smoked salmon, cheese, all sorts of bread rolls and pastries and cereal.
I went for a selection of cereals, croissant, pain au chocolate, smoked salmon and cheese, while Mark sampled the hot selection. We were both very pleased with what we found and rolled out of there. We couldn’t believe how busy the place was, especially as last night there were only two other tables in the restaurant. This morning, considering how early it was, it was pretty packed in there. We also noticed that it was very much a different clientele today, with many more tourists, rather than the businessmen we had seen last night. We also saw a lot of pilots and air stewardesses, which is always the sign of a good hotel.
After we finished eating, we went back to the room to finish packing and then we left everything there, ready to go and headed out to explore the city.
We were very well located and just 10 minutes walk from the main historic area, but before we got there, we saw many sights on the way. The first of those was a relic of the city’s medieval walls.
Then we saw the city’s stock exchange, which first saw trading in 1558.
We then spotted a lovely building across the way and went to get some photos of it. There were so many examples of the old overshadowed by the new here. Frankfurt’s full name is Frankfurt Am Main and its nicknames include Mainhatten or Chicago Am Main, because of all the skyscrapers in the city and they do loom over some of the city’s historic sites, a bit like Boston, as you can see from these photos:
You find all sorts of shops here!
We gradually made our way into the more historic area, first finding the Archaeological Museum....
Then we entered the main square, Romenberg, which is packed with historic buildings, as you can see:
As we stood there, the sun came out and the light it cast over this square was just beautiful. I was so glad that we’d taken the time to walk into the centre.
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I always find it so weird to see a historic structure right in the middle of a city. That's the nice thing about Europe, instead of knocking it down, they build around it...so not like that here.
We headed back to the hotel and picked up everything from the room and checked out, picking up our car from valet.
Some final views from the room – the skies were looking threatening!
We were quickly on the road and off towards Bonn. On the way, there wasn’t much to see. We passed some industrial areas again (Germany seems to have a lot of these! ), some wind turbines, the first we’d seen here and many, many trees, along with a few villages.
Finally we were in Bonn, which used to be the capital of West Germany. When the country was unified, Berlin once again became the capital for the whole country, as it had been previously. It’s dominated by the university, which is housed in a beautiful building that just seems to go on and on and on.
Interesting the cities Bonn is twinned with A very British scene – in Germany!
We saw the cathedral, which was stunning, but unfortunately the camera decided not to work in time, so I didn’t get a very good shot of it...
An interesting McDonald’s An odd vehicle
I did eventually manage to get a photo of the road which is home to Beethoven’s house, which is where he was born and lived until the age of 22.
I was hoping to see the town hall as well, but as you can see, it’s under restoration work now:
To be honest, I was a bit disappointed with Bonn. Don’t get me wrong, it appeared to be a bustling city and, in today’s economic conditions, that’s no bad thing, but it just didn’t grab me. I was glad we’d seen it, but I didn’t feel the need to have spent any longer there.
From there, it wasn’t far to Cologne or Koln, as the Germans say.
As Mark drove, I was busy texting Sabine trying to arrange where and when we’d meet up. When they heard that we wouldn’t be getting there until 1.00, they went to the Hard Rock Cafe for lunch, which I could understand. We headed for the Hilton and checked in. Our room was ready, but sadly, out of the three Hilton bookings I’d made this trip, this was the only one that was so full that I didn’t get my cheap upgrade.
I started chatting to the woman on reception when we checked in and I asked her about the Lindt chocolate museum that I’d seen on the way into the city. It was something that instantly appealed to me (I can’t think why.... ) and there had been nothing in my guidebook about it, so now I wanted to know more. I ended up being taken over to concierge, so she could find out everything for me and, while I did that, I suggested Mark went upstairs with the major luggage. I handed him the room key and the details of the room and thought no more about it.
A few minutes later, I was still being told all about the city and Mark returned. “Where’s the room?” he asked. I was a bit taken aback by this, but all soon became clear. He had been looking for the phone number, rather than the room number! Apparently, the girl at concierge told me he wasn’t the only one to make this mistake...
Finally sorted out, I soon joined him, armed with everything you could ever want to know about Koln. The room we had wasn’t bad (we’d been spoilt by all those upgrades! ) and we had a lovely view, which included the cathedral...
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It's almost as bad as eating fish at the Coral Reef in Epcot when they're swimming right past you! 
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), some wind turbines, the first we’d seen here and many, many trees, along with a few villages. 
) and there had been nothing in my guidebook about it, so now I wanted to know more. I ended up being taken over to concierge, so she could find out everything for me and, while I did that, I suggested Mark went upstairs with the major luggage. I handed him the room key and the details of the room and thought no more about it. 
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