On the road (1) – Six countries, nine days COMPLETED - Page 14 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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I quickly discovered that we had free wi-fi in the room, after reading the French in the hotel information directory. Interestingly, there was no mention of it in the English translation....
LOL, makes you wonder.
Dijon certainly is a beautiful little city. I really envy Europeans their architecture.
I also have to add that I love all of the pictures you take of the buildings and details. I never do that, and for this upcoming trip, I'm really going to try to do that. You've inspired me! I enjoy looking at them so much, and find it all so interesting! So thanks for sharing them all!
Love all the pictures, the catherdral was breathtaking, and I love how there is so much history that is perserved in the smaller towns, how you can actually take a step back to a time that was so different....
Sunday 21 March – part one: please don’t tell me they’re not working!
I will admit that this morning, when I woke up, I really felt like we’d had a tough day yesterday. It was before 7.00, but it took me ages to get moving.
Our first port of call was La Brasserie, where we had eaten dinner last night, as that’s where our free breakfast was being served this morning. I say free, but of course, it’s all covered in the price somewhere.
Neither of us took our cameras down with us, so please forgive the lack of photos, but my goodness, what a great spread they put on. As I said to Mark, if the other two Hiltons that we’re staying at in Frankfurt and Cologne put on as good a breakfast as this one, then I’ll be very happy. There was smoked salmon, salad, cheese (which I started with), along with a selection of cold meats, cooked bacon, sausages, eggs, hash browns etc. (all of which Mark sampled). Then there were the pancakes and I can vouch for the fact that they were superb, especially the maple syrup that went with them.
Let’s not also forget about the selection of pastries, which included muffins, croissants, pain au chocolate and then there were cereals as well, along with fresh fruit, much of it exotic, i.e. pineapple and kiwi fruit and yoghurts. Just about every breakfast food you could think of was there and we certainly sampled a lot of it! We pretty much rolled out of that place, very full.
From there, we headed back to the room and picked our stuff up, with Mark heading to the car park to get the car and me checking out. He pulled round the front of the hotel to pick me up and all I can say is that there was a real idiot taxi driver there (it’s a family board, otherwise I would use other words... ) Patently the guy couldn’t drive and, although he was parked up, he hadn’t made a very good job of it and one of his tyres was at an angle, which made it very difficult for Mark to get past him.
Loaded up, off we went, quickly getting on to the motorway and heading for Grenoble. Why on earth we’d come such a torturous way yesterday was beyond both of us. As we drove, we talked about Lyon, as we spent a fair time passing through its suburbs. Sadly, although we had loved the views from near the cathedral, this place hadn’t grabbed us in the way that, say, Dijon had. Somehow it didn’t seem to have much soul. We commented on how much graffiti there was here and how dirty that made the city look. It was such a shame, but we came away with little love for France’s second city.
We drove along towards Grenoble and, as we did, we started to see mountains on either side of the road. I was absolutely captivated by the sight of mountains with snow on the tops of them so close to where we were driving. As I explained to Mark, I’ve never really gone to places where you see that, so the whole thing was a novelty for me and I was absolutely spellbound for it. I was very quiet, just taking it all in – and taking a few photos of course!
Eventually we got to Grenoble, and unlike Lyon, we were quickly into the heart of the city. I could see the gondola wires and then we saw the base station, but nothing seemed to be moving. Oh no, don’t tell me that they’re not working! :
We drove round for a while, trying to find a parking space and, having had no luck, Mark pulled up, so I could nip out and see if the system was running. it was – phew! Of course, as soon as I got back into the car, I immediately saw on my list of things to do that there was a note that the thing didn’t start until 10.45 and it was only 10.30.
We found a car park nearby and parked up and headed back to the base station and we were amongst the first up there. We paid for our tickets, €6.60 each ($8.90) and then were able to get into the last of the four gondolas doing the rounds. There are only two sets of four gondolas each, so you can just imagine how busy this thing gets in the summer months and how long you might have to wait to get on them. Because it was so quiet, we had a gondola to ourselves, even now there was another couple waiting. They were good enough to wait until the next set, which was really decent of them.
We took off and I have to confess to being deliriously happy to finally be experiencing this. I guess here I should explain the background to my excitement. When I was learning French, there was a BBC book and audio cassette (that shows you how many years ago I learnt French! ) called A Vous La France and it was all centred on Grenoble. I got to one chapter and it was all about the teleferique system and I saw a photo of those four gondolas over the city and I was just fascinated by them. It’s something I’ve remembered since then and, when planning this trip and realising how close we’d be to Grenoble, I worked out that I could finally realise my ambition and go on this thing. So how was it? Well, it certainly didn’t disappoint. We got some great views, although there was rain on the cars, so it was hard to get photos from the thing.
Nope. No way in HADES you'd get me in one of those bubbles. I had to look away to scroll through those photos.
Otherwise, LOVED it!
I had in my mind that France would look somehow different, but really, nope, it looks like driving through America, except the buildings of course. The scenery is pretty much the same!
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There was smoked salmon, salad, cheese (which I started with), along with a selection of cold meats, cooked bacon, sausages, eggs, hash browns etc. (all of which Mark sampled). Then there were the pancakes and I can vouch for the fact that they were superb, especially the maple syrup that went with them. 
As we drove, we talked about Lyon, as we spent a fair time passing through its suburbs. Sadly, although we had loved the views from near the cathedral, this place hadn’t grabbed us in the way that, say, Dijon had. Somehow it didn’t seem to have much soul. We commented on how much graffiti there was here and how dirty that made the city look. It was such a shame, but we came away with little love for France’s second city. 
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