Rest, relaxation and a bit of rain in Spain COMPLETE 11/10 - Page 8 - 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 The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk.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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Tuesday 13 October – part five: what was that crash?
We got back in the car and headed towards the villa.
One of the trams running in the area
Beating the train!
On the way, we stopped at Carrefour supermarket at Benidorm on the way. Honestly, the food there was amazing – I even had to get some photos of the fish on offer, as I’ve never seen anything like it before.
I can still smell these, just looking at this photo!
Best of all, we found some apple and hazelnut liquor for just €2.96 (about $4.40), much cheaper than the €5 we’d paid at the Chinese earlier in the week.
On the way out, Mark stopped to browse for olives:
From there, it was back to the villa, where we sat and relaxed, with me braving the sun for an hour or so, until the factor 50 lotion pretty much gave up the battle of protecting me from the sun, then I had to venture into the shade. It certainly wasn’t nearly as hot as yesterday and was much more pleasant today.
Finally I got some photos of the new gate:
And the windows, which now had glass in – only added earlier in the day, while we were out:
As we were sitting outside, we heard a massive crash and just assumed that maybe it was a lorry that had lost its load. There are a lot of speed ramps around here and it’s not unusual to hear lorries hitting them at speed. A little later, I was just getting changed, when Mark announced that everyone was going down to see what had happened, as there were police just down the road. We drove down and discovered that a German car had hit a wall and had overturned. A woman was just being helped out of it and looked in amazing shape, considering the state of the car. I didn’t have the camera with me on that visit, but a little later, when we headed out, I managed to grab this shot:
To be honest, it really doesn’t show the full extent of the damage to the car, which could be seen much better from the other end of the road, but as there was a policeman standing at that end, I didn’t really want to stick the camera out and get a shot, while he was watching. :
Tuesday 13 October – part six: traditional tapas dining
We had chatted about going into Moraira for a meal at one of the seafront restaurants, which I’d enjoyed so much last time, and we decided that tonight would be a good night for that meal. We drove down and took a few photos on the way.
We quickly headed to the place we had enjoyed so much last time, called El Lloc de Poble and it wasn’t busy at all when we arrived.
We had a look through both the tapas menu and the main menu, opting to go for tapas style snacks for appetisers. Between us, we got crab croquettes (my choice and definitively the best out of the bunch – everyone agreed on that! ), potato with aioli (essentially a garlic and mayonnaise dip used a lot in Spain, it’s lovely ), ham croquettes and calamari. It all worked really well, with us picking and choosing what we wanted out of that selection. We almost felt full after we finished that!
Then it was on to main courses. I had a lot of problem deciding what to go for, as there was such a good fish selection, but eventually went for the fried hake or merluza a la romana, a dish that is regularly covered in my Spanish language learning kit, so I opted to try a traditional Spanish dish and very good it was too.
Mark wasn’t so happy with his. He went for the fried mixed fish and I think he was expecting fish like salmon or prawns, but instead he got a mixture of things like calamari and whitebait, as you can see:
We all commented on how full we were by the end of the main course, but I’ll always look at a dessert menu and that was our downfall, as everyone ended up getting a dessert. I went for the cappuccino brulee, which was superb, but there just wasn’t enough of it. I could easily have eaten more! Mark had the reina, a date and pecan nut pie and I didn’t hear any complaints from him about it. :
We paid for the meal for the four of us to say thank you to Mark’s parents for ferrying us around everywhere. After all, they’d saved us the cost of a rental car by doing that for us. The bill came to €105 (about $156.15) for the four of us, which we didn’t think was too bad, but I know Dave nearly had a heart attack when he found out how much it had come to!
Once we finished eating, we walked back to the car, getting some night-time shots of Moraira on the way.
Then it was back to the villa, where we watched a bit of TV, before heading off to bed for the night.
The weather today was in the high 80s and sunny. The best thing today was missing stopping in Alicante. The worst thing today was how little there was at Altea market. Today we tried seeing Heurte del Cura at Elx. And the result was it’s a beautiful place and not too big. The most magical moment today was going back to El Lloc de Poble for dinner.
PassPorter's Free-Book to Walt Disney World It’s hard to believe anything is free at Walt Disney World; but there are actually a number of things you can get or do for little to no cost. This e-book documents over 200 free or cheap tips to do before you go and after you arrive. You could save a considerable amount of money following these tips. Perhaps more importantly; you can discover overlooked attractions and little-known details most people whiz by on their way to spend money. Click here to see free sample pages from the e-book! Get this popular e-book free of extra charges when you join the PassPorter's Club for as little as $4.95. A club pass includes access to all our other e-books; e-worksheets; super-size photos; and more! This e-book is also available for separate purchase in the PassPorter Online Store for just $5.95.
PassPorter's Free-Book to Walt Disney World It’s hard to believe anything is free at Walt Disney World; but there are actually a number of things you can get or do for little to no cost. This e-book documents over 200 free or cheap tips to do before you go and after you arrive. You could save a considerable amount of money following these tips. Perhaps more importantly; you can discover overlooked attractions and little-known details most people whiz by on their way to spend money. Click here to see free sample pages from the e-book! Get this popular e-book free of extra charges when you join the PassPorter's Club for as little as $4.95. A club pass includes access to all our other e-books; e-worksheets; super-size photos; and more! This e-book is also available for separate purchase in the PassPorter Online Store for just $5.95.