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European Road Trip Diary – June/July 2013

Day 1 – Travel to Lille

Bonjour! We are here at the hotel in Lille, which we are staying in until Monday. It was an early start this morning at quarter to 7. It took us 8 hours (it was a bit mad!) as there was a couple of accidents. But we managed to get...

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Day 2 – Exploring Lille

Well…we woke up to a lovely sunny day with blue skies and headed down onto the metro, which was about a 20 minute walk, which would take us into the centre. Lille is surprisingly accessible at all stations, with low platforms and train edges. If you’re thinking of getting...

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Day 3 – Travel to Brussels

Another lovely day awaited us, as we travelled Brussels, in Belgium. Seeing as I was feeling lazy we didn’t set off until about 11. A journey that could have taken 1 hour, took more like 4, as we decided to go exploring the Belgian towns and countryside. This involved...

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Day 4 – Exploring Brussels

We woke up in the beautiful city of Brussels, looking forward to visiting the Atomium. As I discovered yesterday, the trams are not that wheelchair friendly, so we resorted to taking my manual wheelchair. It was a good job we did! We planned to join the metro at Gare...

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Day 5 – Travel to Cologne

Today was another travelling day in the car to Cologne. We decided to take the route out of Belgium, into the Netherlands, and then down to Germany. This was actually quite a nice way! We headed off about midday and overcame the obstacle of getting my van into the...

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Day 6 – Exploring Cologne

I want to start this post by mentioning the palaver that occurred when we decided to order Domino’s pizza last night. And yes we are still in Germany, which is part of the problem! We spent about an hour trying to translate the German words into English, only to...

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Day 7 – Travel to Frankfurt

Well, stupid me and I forgot my phone last night, so couldn’t tweet on the cable car! However, I wish I had filmed it, as my PA was crapping himself, as he is afraid of heights. It made good photos though! In terms of accessibility, well there is nothing,...

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Day 8 – Exploring Frankfurt

I can’t believe how fast this holiday has gone! Today we explored Frankfurt, which began with an hour walk into the centre. As the trams and metros are not very wheelchair accessible, you could probably get away with it in a manual wheelchair, but I knew that I wanted...

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Day 9 – Travel and exploring Luxembourg

Last night we had a series of thunder storms in Frankfurt. As we were on the 10th floor of the hotel, it made for good viewing, and pictures. This continued throughout the night so I woke up to a miserable looking morning, for the drive ahead to Luxembourg. As...

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Day 10 & 11 – Travel and visit Disneyland

Firstly I want to apologise for missing yesterday’s post. We set off from Luxembourg to Disneyland Paris, all was fine until we got really lost, so it ended up taking about 5 and a half hours. By that time I was knackered! Anyway, we started yesterday by a trip...

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Day 12 – Travel to Paris (after swapping PAs!)

So here we are sitting in the hotel in La Defense in Paris! We checked in at our hotel and went for a walk around the local area, which is kind of dodgy but not as bad as Brussels. Tomorrow we will be going up the Grand Arche as...

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Day 13 – Exploring Paris

We woke up to a lovely hot day here in Paris. As we are staying next to the financial district, we headed there first. This was simple walk from the hotel along a cycle path and then we were met by the Grande Arche which we had planned to...

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Day 14 – Travel to Strasbourg

Well if its 26 degrees at night and no air conditioning isn’t enough, I don’t know what is! Anyway today we took the five hour drive to Strasbourg, which included an extra hour getting out of Paris itself even though it’s a Sunday, I guess that’s just Paris. We...

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Day 16 – Exploring Zurich

Today we headed into Zurich from our hotel at the airport, we debated about getting on the metro into the centre however as my wheelchair wasn’t really charged we thought it would be safer just to drive in. I would say it was safer but on the drive in...

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Day 17 – The Jungfrau

Well as you can see we got to the hotel quite late which is why I’m writing this this morning. Yesterday we headed from Zurich to the Jungfraujoch which took us up the Jungfrau to the top of Europe. To start with we were a bit skeptical about its...

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Day 18 – Exploring Bern

Here I am again… Today we headed out and about in Bern city centre which began by a half an hour walk from the hotel. Along the way I noticed that most of the trams and buses are wheelchair accessible which is good to know! We started at my...

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Day 19 – Travel to Lyon

Today we travelled from Bern to Lyon, we decided not to use the sat nav and instead resorted to a good old European road map. Throughout our journey we travelled through lots of picturesque Swiss countryside and, of course, tunnels! We arrived back in France to lovely hot temperature...

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Day 20 – Exploring Lyon and the Tour de France

We had an unexpected start to the morning as we had planned to move the car to avoid paying a high rate for parking however when we got to the car, we discovered that my PAs had left the lights on which lead to a dead battery. Through my...

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Day 21 – Exploring Lyon (Round 2) and travel to Avignon

We began today by going for a wander around the financial district of Lyon in which we discovered we could go up the tallest building as it is a Radisson hotel and bar. The plan was to buy a cup of tea up there but looking at the prices,...

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Day 22 – Exploring Avignon and travel to Montpellier

We woke up in our posh hotel to another hot and sunny day as we headed to the centre of Avignon for a wander around the palais de papes. One word of advice, if you’re planning to visit Avignon in a manual wheelchair, forget about it because loads of...

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Day 23 – In and Around Sete

Today was our last day in the south of France before starting to head back to Calais and guess what, my electric wheelchair still has a bad cable! Oh well we headed out in the van down to Sete, a town on the Mediterranean coast. Along the way we...

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Day 24 – Travel to Claremont Ferrand via the Millau Viaduct

This morning we checked out of the hotel and headed straight into Montpellier for arrive around. During this time I noticed that the trams were completely accessible if you are thinking about of going even though there are quite a lot of cobbled streets! We then, yet again drove...

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Day 25 – Travel to Meaux and the Disney Village

We began our last full day in France by driving from our hotel in Claremont Ferrand to Meaux on the outskirts of Paris. Basically our journey consisted of one straight road until we hit Paris where we encountered a number of motorcycles dodging in and out of traffic and...

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Day 26 – Homeward Bound

Well here I am again back in sunny Bristol! Yesterday, we headed back to Calais making good time catching the 1:30 shuttle back to Folkestone. That seemed to be the end of our luck as we sat on the M25 for almost 3 hours getting back to Bristol finally...

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