Month: December 2014

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 to Luxembourg train station, to find breakfast. During this time my PA was chasing pigeons away (I have a phobia of them), when this guy starting shouting at him, “leave the pigeon alone”, to which my PA explained why, but the guy kept repeating “leave the pigeon alone”! I found it quite funny, whilst my PA was ready to teach him a lesson :).

We set off for Disneyland at about midday and as I said above we ended up getting lost as my PAs sat-nav was set up to avoid toll roads. We then went for tea at the Rainforest cafe, to end a tiring day followed by a short walk into the park to get our bearings.

Today we went into the park again and went on some rides. Most of the ones I wanted to go on we’re closed, but oh well! I was surprised that Disneyland has introduced this new wheelchair booking system. Rather than just queuing up to go on a ride, now you have to book a slot at an allotted time to get on. This can be frustrating if you don’t have a strict plan in mind.

We then realised that my wheelchair hadn’t been charged, due to the plug in the hotel not working. So we’re now in the hotel resting whilst it is charging, but plan to go back out to watch the parade later. On the whole, Disneyland is really good for accessibility. My PA said it’s like what everywhere should be like, hopefully in the future…

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 its Sunday, there were no lorries on the roads, which made for a pleasant drive, especially in the forests.

We arrived into Luxembourg, and as we are only staying here for one night, we headed out straight away into the city. Although it is so small, I’ve got to say it seems very posh and mostly accessible. This is apart from the usual European steps into some shops, and cobbled streets, one of which we decided to go down, very slowly as it was so steep! At the bottom we discovered the old city of Luxembourg, for which I was surprised to see an elevator built into the cliff, eliminating the need to walk back up!

We found it quite difficult to find a place to eat this evening, as most places had a step at the front. We may have had reduced options as it’s Sunday, but there didn’t seem many places, so we got some fast food.

Tomorrow we are heading to the train station and then off to Disneyland Paris!

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 to use my tripod for photos, so we decided to walk! Like in every city I have been, we wandered around the train station. As it was Saturday is was really busy, so we took one look around the shopping centre, which didn’t have any air conditioning and then decided to get out of there.

We attempted to go up the main tower, but it was closed due to technical problems. However, as I have been up there previously, I can remember that it’s great for accessibility, whilst giving an amazing panoramic view of Frankfurt.
By this time, it was about 26 degrees and humid, so we decided to head back to the hotel and chill out for the rest of the day.

Tomorrow we take a 3 hour drive to Luxembourg City for one night, so more driving pictures will be coming up.

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, as it’s old, so I took my manual wheelchair and left it at one side of the river and just did a loop round. After that we decided to explore the area, and found a small, local restaurant for some tea.

Afterwards, we stopped off at a local German kiosk, for my PAs to pick up a beer. While I was driving around the shop, the shopkeeper started to speak to me in German, which I don’t understand! My French is alright though. Anyway, I went out of the shop to wait for my PA, in which time, the shop keeper decided to come out and give me a free ice cream and 2 big bottles of orange and lemonade! Who says there are no advantages to being disabled??

Today we headed from Cologne to Frankfurt, along the autobahn, which gave my PA, who was driving, an opportunity to test the van, whilst the other sat in the back scared reading her book…of course we did it safely!

We arrived at our hotel, which is a piece of architecture in itself, and had some lunch. We then decided to head out for a wander through some of the skyscrapers, getting lost in the process! We picked up some stuff for tea and had a picnic looking at the view out of the window (we’re
on the 10 th floor). As our hotel is on one of the main flight paths on the approach to Frankfurt airport, the view was great!

Tomorrow we are going explore more of Frankfurt, including another observation tower, and always the train station. I’m going to be sick of trains by time I return to Bristol.

Keep following twitter for more photos.

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 discover that they didn’t deliver to the hotel. We then thought we would ring them, which turned out to be fun as well. Eventually they delivered it just for us to my Hotel room door!

Anyway, it has been another hot day wondering around Cologne including the cathedral and of course the train station, which seemed very accessible. However, we had to resorted to walking, instead of using the U-bahn, as again the step is massive, so could only be used in a manual wheelchair. With my love for architecture, we decided to go up the Cologne triangle, which is an observation deck, from which you have a clear view of the city. This was all accessible, so if you are interested in that, it’s a great attraction to see 🙂

We’re now back at the hotel having a chill, planning to go and get the cable car across the river Rhine in a bit. I’m writing this post early as my Internet only lasts 24 hours and cost 30 euros, cheap skate!

We will tweet again when we go onto the cable car later and then tomorrow we head to Frankfurt, so keep following us.

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 car lift to get out of the hotel even though we lost our ticket. As always, it was manic getting out of Brussels. After we decided to go for a hunt for some lunch. It is surprising how many Belgian towns don’t have restaurants or even food shops or we couldn’t find them anyway! So we were starving by the time we eventually found a deli in a small town.

After lunch, we headed to Cologne and what we thought was going to be a national park, turned out to be loads of fields with Dutch people watering them.

Oh well. We arrived in Cologne at about 5, and had a chilled evening. Looking forward to exploring tomorrow, and going up the Cologne Triangle Tower.

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 du Midi, which said it was accessible on the map, however we found out that to get to the lift you have to go down the escalator, which doesn’t make any sense… My PA maneuvered my wheelchair onto the escalator, whilst I was crapping myself! But all fine, and there’s some funny pictures to prove it 🙂 In addition, the step up onto the metro was quite big, and I don’t think I would have been able to it on my electric wheelchair.

Anyway, we got off the metro towards the end of one of the lines, to be greeted by the Atomium, which was massive! We decided to go up in the lift to start with up to the top is the only wheelchair accessible part. We then decided to walk up the 320 steps, up and down to explore the individual spheres  with help of my PAs. Good exercise for me though! I decided to sit down on one of the escalators, going downwards, which was kind of like the launch of Space Mountain in Disneyland, if you’ve ever been there?

We then decided to go for a wander around and caught the tram back to hotel. Again, the website said that all trams are accessible, which is true, but at some stations there are massive gaps and steps up to the tram. So all in all, it’s not a good way to get around in an electric wheelchair, but fine in a manual.

Tomorrow we head off to Cologne, taking a detour as always, so look out for some more Tweeting.

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 getting lost again, but all fine!

We arrived into the bustle of Brussels with my PAs sat-nav playing up, which meant us going to some interesting parts, having to reverse back up some streets onto roundabouts. We checked in and then decided to go for a wander around the Gare du Midi train station, to take some photos and see how the access was for the tram tomorrow, which involved me nearly getting killed by one! Although when I looked at the step up to the tram on YouTube it didn’t look high, in reality it is quite high! So I think it will be a manual wheel-chair visit to the Atomium tomorrow. Oh well, it’s not bad going for 3 days abroad!

See you tomorrow and keep watching Twitter

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 it, it’s a good idea!

Anyway, we got off at the metro stop at the main train station, Gare de Lille Flanders, only to discover that the lift was undergoing maintenance, and was subsequently closed. This meant that we couldn’t get out of the station. After a guy offered to try to lift the wheelchair up the escalator (I don’t think he realised how heavy it was!), we decided to go onto the next stop and use the lift there. This turned out well actually. As with most French metros we popped out in a random lift in the middle of the street, on the main square, shown on one of the Twitter photos. Because I am a train lover, we walked around the main 2 train stations looking at the architecture and obviously taking photos, this included the tallest building in Lille, which is sad!! We then found a restaurant In the Grande plaza. They even had a portable ramp to help me into the restaurant. Which is good for France!

After lunch, we decided take a walk around Lille and came across the citadel, from what we could understand it was an amazing, huge park with a canal running alongside it, packed full of people and ALL accessible!! We spent a few hours walking around, what seemed like miles then decided to sit on the grass for a chill.
We decided to head back, via getting lost. The metro tickets were confusing, and unluckily for us the train that we caught was part of a random inspection. Our tickets were not valid so we got kicked off! My PAs tried to explain the situation and after a few gestures it was all sorted.

Now we’re back at the hotel with my PAs moaning about achy feet 🙂

Looking forward to tomorrow’s drive to Brussels, stopping at a town called Silly for lunch, which will be fun.

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 here finally!
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