A return to Switzerland – land of mountains, museums and moos! COMPLETED 12/4 - Page 66 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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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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The tunnel to Italy - very cool! I guess a tunnel is a tunnel, but I'm guessing it feels different when you're driving it versus riding a train through it! (like the chunnel, I mean ) Yes, the architecture is decidedly different!
It is very different to be driving through a tunnel as opposed to the Eurotunnel, where really it feels like you're on a train (which you are) just it happens to be inside a tunnel.
Interesting how different the areas can be - all in the same country. Although I guess the same can be said for the US (but we're a smidge bigger than Switzerland!).
I wondered if the walls around the highway in the one picture were to keep rocks off in a rock slide, or to make snow removal easier in the winter months, or something else entirely?
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Interesting how different the areas can be - all in the same country. Although I guess the same can be said for the US (but we're a smidge bigger than Switzerland!).
Just a bit... and as far as I'm aware, you don't have three official languages either.
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I wondered if the walls around the highway in the one picture were to keep rocks off in a rock slide, or to make snow removal easier in the winter months, or something else entirely?
I'd guess they're there to keep rocks off and maybe snow too.
It is interesting seeing the signs change languages but still be in the same country. South Africa has 11 official languages (!!), but English and Africaans are the two most used and I don't think I saw anything other than those two on signs.
Nice prospectus on St. Gotthard tunnel. You covered it all with the approach, the wait, going through and out of it. Looks like I remember it. Thought it was quite amazing as I'd never been through a tunnel as vast as this before. Nice scenery on the way to Lugano, but not quite as diverse as the rest of Schweiz.
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October 6, 2017-Enjoying an amazing dinner at Victoria & Albert's with PP's Dot and Drew
My TR from my most recent trip is now underway. Includes: Universal Studios Florida, Disney World and Sea World Orlando Trifecta TR -Updated December 10th! TR is now COMPLETED!
It is interesting seeing the signs change languages but still be in the same country. South Africa has 11 official languages (!!), but English and Africaans are the two most used and I don't think I saw anything other than those two on signs.
Wow - 11 languages? You learn something new every day...
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Nice prospectus on St. Gotthard tunnel. You covered it all with the approach, the wait, going through and out of it.
Thank you.
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Looks like I remember it. Thought it was quite amazing as I'd never been through a tunnel as vast as this before.
We'd never driven through one this long either. Obviously we've done the Channel Tunnel before, but that's very different as you don't drive through - you let the train take the strain...
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Nice scenery on the way to Lugano, but not quite as diverse as the rest of Schweiz.
Thursday 5 September – part three: this is an expensive town!
We headed up to the surface…
… and soon found ourselves at the Villa Ciani, which was built in the 17th century and then remodelled in the mid 19th century. It’s home to the Civic Museum of the Fine Arts, but we were more interested in the building from the outside than going into it.
We wandered through the lovely landscaped park…
… and found ourselves by the side of the lake with some beautiful views.
I thought that only Geneva had one of these, but apparently not.
We walked along, getting some more shots of the lakefront as we did.
We were both keen to use the restrooms, so we were delighted when we spotted a McDonalds, so in we went.
Fortunately, unlike the one we’d been in Bern the last time we were in Switzerland, there were no number codes to punch in (to stop non-customers using them), so we both used the facilities. I was going to buy something in there, as I fancied a sundae or perhaps a smoothie, but they didn’t have anything like that on their menu, so I didn’t bother.
We came out of there and found this lovely lakeside park.
We headed next into the Piazza della Riforma, which was beautiful. See what I mean about there being lots of bank buildings here?
We just wandered for a while, taking in the scenery…
As you can tell from the shops, this is an expensive town.
We found that out for ourselves when I went to buy a couple of fridge magnets, only to discover they were 14 CHF (c. $15.10). That’s way more than we’d been paying elsewhere in Switzerland. You know it’s bad when you’re thinking things are more expensive than the rest of Switzerland.
A couple of other things just didn’t sit right with us about Lugano. The first was the amount of smoking. There was way more than we’d seen anywhere else this vacation, and we suspected this had to do with it being more towards the Italian end of the country, as we’ve always found a lot of smoking in Italy. The other thing was actually the lack of catering to tourists, which was odd given that we knew it was an attraction, and that we’d already seen a little train taking tourists around. Somehow that made it feel a lot less welcoming. Both of us came away saying we were glad we’d been here, but we wouldn’t be coming back. It just wasn’t us.
We headed back to the car park, and paid up and headed out.
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) Yes, the architecture is decidedly different!
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Pixie Dust
You learn something new every day... 
it's not....
Sorry it wasn't more welcoming, and was so expensive! 
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