Nath, Author at The Wheelchair Traveller

Day 3 – Grand Central Station and Empire State Building

Ok so I’m slightly more awake (well I woke up at 5:45) so see how today’s blog goes!

After my early start we headed out to have breakfast at an American Diner for which, as usual, came in large portions so didn’t feel like having lunch! We headed towards Grand Central Station which obviously consists of my favourite things, trains!! On our way we walked through Times Square and, as it has been rather cold ended up having to buy hoodies as we were too far away from the hotel (well couldn’t be bothered to go back), me and my PA decided to buy identical ones making us look awesome!

Majestic Grand Central Station is a must see! if you visit New York but then I would say that because of my train obsession. We headed down to the platforms to begin with so I could go trainspotting and then walked around with a hope of finding a Starbucks to be able to tweet photos from earlier on. Apart from being a train station, Grand Central also has a dining concourse but most importantly, an Apple store. The way in was simple but the way out took us a little longer as we seemed to get lost and walk through the hottest part of the station.

After randomly walking around for a while with no plan of what actually to do, we decided to head up the Empire State Building. In terms of price, it is quite reasonable for me and one other PA, as the other one is a seasoned New Yorker so done it too many times already, so in total it came to $51. The place seemed tranquil considering it is meant to be one of the icons of New York and we managed to get up to the top in a matter of minutes (I skipped the queues as normal so it could have taken a little longer I guess). As usual throughout this trip, my PA took a lot of selfies as well as photos, videos as well as all the other touristy crap you can think of. In terms of access, as well as being able to go outside, they have lower viewing sections for wheelchairs and children so you are able to get stunning views over Manhatten and the surrounding areas. After trouble getting down to street level as there was issues with the elevator, we set out for a hunt to find my other PA who said she would wait in Starbucks but she had wandered off on a shopping spree (and now we are having a domestic).

After finding her, my battery was running out so we returned to the hotel where my other PA went to meet her friend after. I then had a craving for cheesecake so guess what we did? We went out and found some making us fat! On our way back I couldn’t resist going down to the Subway for a little walk around which probably seems pointless to everyone else apart from me but hey! On our return to the hotel, we have bought tickets to go to see The Lion King on Saturday night which will be a first time experience for me which should be good.

Tomorrow we are going to head down to Lower Manhatten as I have booked a helicopter ride over the skyline aswell as exploring that area so find out what we eventually do on our Twitter.

See you tomorrow or in most cases Friday morning

Nath 🙂

Day 2 – Travel to New York

This has been the longest day ever and currently we are going rather insane, so apologies!

The alarm was set for 5:12am as I like to rather awkward in my timing from which we drove to Terminal 3 where we arranged for the van to be picked up and taken to the car park. We checked which was a lot easier than Bristol, but thats what you get for a larger airport I guess. After we had breakfast in the departure lounge we boarded the plane for which I took my electric wheelchair up to the doors and then it was taken down to the hold. After 7 hours of being fed everything you can think of by Virgin Atlantic, including mini FAB ice lollies which were a personal favourite for one of my PA’s, we arrived in JFK Airport.

I was surprised not to see my electric wheelchair which is normally at the door like normal, instead one the airport staff was waiting with a manual wheelchair with the electric one waiting by itself next to the baggage collection area, it looked like it had been abandoned! Our next adventure consisted of getting into a wheelchair accessible taxi after a short wait with a Russian driver, who seemed to have a death wish. My PA’s were petrified whilst I was sitting in the back just laughing as we slalomed down the highway, whilst fearing for my own life as well!

We arrived at the hotel, The Hudson and checked into our rooms for which you can see the scale of from the photo that I have just uploaded on Twitter!

After chilling in the room for a while, we decided to head out as the hotel is right next to Central Park which we had a walk about in the lovely concrete heat of New York which was meant to be only 25 degrees, but it wasn’t! We returned back to the hotel after getting a frozen yogurt in which now we are trying to stay awake to adjust to the time which is rather difficult after 18 hours!!

Toorrow we are meant to have a plan of what we are doing but we don’t actually know like normal and as 3G costs so much we will post about 2 photos on Twitter,

See you tomorrow 🙂

Day 1 – London

Well where are we? Only in the Ibis hotel at Heathrow! However this is me, so it’s still been a random day.

We left Bristol about 11am and arrived at the hotel (it’s posh for Ibis…better than Lyon) at about 1. After lunch instead of staying at the hotel all afternoon and probably getting bored out of my mind, we decided to head into Heathrow and, in particular the Underground which is one of my favourite things! By this time it was chucking it down so we decided to go by shuttle bus which cost me £13.50 for 3 people just for a single for a five minute bus ride, rip off!!

We headed into the underground station serving Terminal 1,2&3 as I had noticed on one of my trips to London that the particular station has now got platform humps (which raises the level of the platform up to the height of the train, only took them a while to do it!) we chose a random station to stop at which turned out to be Green Park (near Buckingham palace) where we discovered that the rain had become moister so we walked a massive circle with my PA’s taking selfies even though we live in the country! As I’m sad, I kind of know most of the underground networks so decided to get on the Jubilee Line at Westminister with the theory of changing at Green Park to Heathrow. This did not go according to plan as I forgot that the platform hump at Green Park does not span the whole platform so getting on the wrong section of the train meant that we could not get off. The nearest accessible station after Green Park was all the way out to Wembley which took about 50 minutes to get to there just to come back, which was awesome.

By the time we got back to Heathrow it was about 8o’clock so came back to the hotel and had tea.

Tomorrow we will be flying to New York and I have just remembered the time difference so I will probably be writing this at between 2 and 4 o’clock in the morning, so you can have a lovely read in the morning about the random adventures we had the day before.

Day 4 in Dublin

So here I am back at home after a long Irish weekend. As usual I was being lazy, didn’t actually wake up until half 9 by which time we rushing to get down to breakfast before it closed. But all fun! After we had checked out and left our bags, we headed out for a walk in the sunshine by the river down to the ferry terminal. Earlier that day, my PA went out for some fresh air and saw a dog lying in the road after it had been knocked down. So, me being a dog lover, I was a bit nervous incase it was still there.

We decided to do a circular route crossing the river and winding our way back to the hotel upon which we discovered yet another stadium which was more to my taste as it was a glass structure (my Irish PA should of pointed this out!) and then we had some time to spare before we went to the airport for which we went in the cafe having a chat. Thoughout this blog I haven’t really said anything about the accessibility side to Dublin, as with any big city nowadays the centre is completely accessible but it is when you start to enter the suburbs you start to have issues because the drop curbs are not really drop curbs and are more like a lowered down bit of concrete!

Anyway, we had our lunch and returned to the hotel to picked up by the prearranged taxi driver (this was not Mr Perfect). We arrived at Terminal 2 at about half 3 and checked in and all that without any issues and, as on the way there, they were really helpful getting me on the plane. After waiting about an hour in the queue to take off we had a lovely flight back where it was clear skies all the way, so went spotting over Wales. We arrived back into Bristol with the ground crew not having a clue what they were doing yet again so they kind of made it up as they went along and made one of my PA’s go on the shuttle bus whilst one stayed with me. One of my PA’s that was with me was waiting for the staff to try and transfer me from the isle chair to my wheelchair (which they didn’t have a clue how to do either). She was made out to be my mother by an old lady, she’s 20! As we were being driven back to the terminal we heard on the radio that apparently I had gone missing, so god knows what happened, but anyway.

Whilst all this was happening, my other PA who was meant to be picking us up was going through an ordeal of her own as she’d never been to Bristol airport and her SATNAV took her the opposite way. One of the other PA’s voted to drive back, bless!

So it’s back to revision for my final uni exams and then it’s time for America and Canada starting in the 26th May! So be sure to check out my Wheelchair Traveller blog to see what I get myself into with two young female PA’s and of course Twitter!

See you then, Nath 🙂

Day 3 in Dublin

So here I am sitting with super bunny, elephant and now his new friend a leprechaun! Anyway, we woke up to clear sky’s and headed out after breakfast on a quest to find a bank to try to settle the argument with Jury’s Inn Hotel. My PA wrote down strict instructions on how to get there which we followed and ended up coming across the docklands with its amazing architecture which provided some great photo opportunities. After about 20 mins of searching for a bank in the place where it said on Google Maps, we resulted to asking random people. This was perhaps a bad idea as it turned out that the majority were foreigners or Irish people not from Dublin. My PA realised that there was a phone number of the location which ended up being the head office of which said that there was no HSBC banks in Dublin or the entirety of Ireland, so who knows why there is a head office here?

We then followed some more strict instructions to get to Croke Park Statium which my Irish PA (who is reading this) said was amazing……I beg to differ. We walked through some lovely and rough Irish housing estates and saw a weird thin house. After being barker at by several dogs we found a magnificent stadium that we walked about half hour to see, it took 2 mins to see the whole stadium, but then I don’t like football, so! We then walked through some more weird and wonderful housing estates and managed to find out way back to the city centre where we stopped off for some lunch. As always, it was a kind of weird restaurant plus they couldn’t get the orders for a simple sandwich right, so I don’t really recommend a place called The Living Rooms. We then spent the rest of the afternoon wondering around Dublin shopping district where there was. It much to see, but I guess that’s what you get going to a country with only 3 million people. Since my PA’s legs were getting tired, we found the tram again and relaxed until we went out for dinner.

It seems that everything in Ireland is so expensive so you would expect it to be of good quality although we went into an American style restaurant where I ordered a calzone which seemed to be heated up from a ready meal, I had a cheesecake simply to find out if it was a so called New York Cheese Cake, it was far from it. As it was the last night in Dublin we went for a pint, or a half pint if your me, of Guinness, and that was about it.

Tomorrow, we don’t really have a plan apart from flying home at 5.30pm, which will be interesting once again. So follow us on Twitter to see what we decide to do!

See you tomorrow, Nath 😉

Day 2 in Dublin

We woke up to another sunny day with me being lazy as usual! After breakfast we headed out onto the LUAS which is the Dublin tram system and is conveniently located next to our hotel. The tram itself reminded me of my European road trip last year as it is completely accessible as there is no gap between the platform and the tram. As we were heading off on the tram this guy approached everyone and started singing Bob Dylan ‘blowing in the wind’ and I think everyone shared the same thought as me in terms of thinking what the hell is going on? After my PA had worked out how to get tickets we went to my favourite place in every city, the train station!! For those of you that actually care it was quite nice and then we were approached by a guy from Manchester working for the railway who asked us if we would like to go on the platform and get close to the trains for a close up, I know I am sad about trains to an extent but not that much so we declined his generous offer!

However, the guy was useful heading us in the direction of the zoo to see some lovely animals. we finally arrived at the entrance after nearly killing ourselves as there was no crossings outside and got our tickets. Again, there are benefits to being disabled as I got in for a concession and one PA got in free so in total it came to about €25 for three of us. We then realised the scale of the zoo and worked out that it was a really good deal for what we had paid. It must of taken us about 3 hours to walk around the zoo discovering animals like giraffes and elephants. We then stopped for lunch after trying several places which only had outside seating which is a no go for me as there were pigeons or as I like to call them the DEVIL! We resorted to the restaurant and discovered that the zoo doesn’t stock straws because they pose a risk to animals, apparently it was a result of a monkey choking on one, seriously?

We headed back to the hotel and, again ate in the room, I’m getting too lazy!

Tomorrow we don’t really have a clue what we are doing which will be fun, we may go to a football stadium which my Irish PA will love if we can find a way to get there! See you tomorrow, Nath 🙂

Ps my wheelchair which is called super bunny met its best friend, the tortoise at the zoo and found an elephant to take with it as well!

Day 1 in Dublin

So here I am, back again on my travels, this time in Dublin! One of my PA’s drove us to the airport where we checked in without that much of a problem, Bristol is actually really good to fly from by the way. We got told to go over to the special assistance point, where there was nothing but a phone on the table, so we had to ring a random number to get assistance around the airport even though half of it we didn’t need anyway, but they were very helpful, but also a little patronising which made me want to kill them by the end of it!

We got onto a random mini bus which took us out to the airfield, I have never stood on a airfield before, it’s quite windy! Anyway, there was a large group of ground crew deciding the best way to get my electric wheelchair onto the plane and then, like normal, they decided to lift it, I’m sure health and safety went out the window, but oh well.

After a short flight, we arrived in Dublin where we were greeted by yet another mini bus. as opposed to Bristol where they lifted my wheelchair, it seemed that Dublin had the sense to use equipment, it was like a luggage conveyer belt which they used to get my luggage off the plane and onto the mini bus. As usual I skipped right through security, there are benefits of being disabled sometimes! And we were then escorted out of the terminal and all the way to our taxi with our lovely Polish driver.

You may have thought the flight would have been the most difficult part of the journey, but infact our troubles hadn’t even began yet! We entered the hotel to be told that they forgot to read the comments section on the booking form which clearly stated that the room needed to be wheelchair accessible, obviously they didn’t have a wheelchair accessable room. We were then told that we would be transferred to another hotel, which we waited an hour for just for the taxi to take us there. This taxi driver, who was foreign, seemed to have an obsession with the word ‘perfect’ as it was used in nearly every sentence. We finally arrived at another hotel where we were informed that apparently we had not paid for any of our accommodation when it stated on the paperwork that it was prepaid, so my PA’s got a little stressed and stroppy with the staff in the hotels. By this time it was around 5pm, and we hadn’t even eaten, so we decided to get a pizza takeaway to eat in the room. After all this palava we decided to go for a little walk into the centre where they have the pointless Dublin Spire which was completed 3 years late (for those of you that actually care). We then walked back to the hotel down some back streets taking some evening photos along the way. As we are in Ireland, we finished our day with a pint of Guinness 😉 and attempted to go for a shower, but the shower screen was screwed to the ceiling, so that was eventful.

Tomorrow we aim to explore the train station, my weird obsession, and then go to Dublin Zoo, so keep following on here and Twitter where we have more photos than today! See you tomorrow 🙂

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 around 8!!!

This post concludes my Wheelchair Traveller blog for this year as I return to university in September but be sure to check it out again next year where I have plans for America.

See you then!

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 it was then we realised that we were back where we first started…. We even drove on the same road that we used to get to Strasbourg so we completed a full circle racking up 2000 miles along the way!

Anyway, after the sat nav decided to take us on a tour of Meaux, we reached our hotel for the night were we checked in and then headed out to the Disney village which is 20 minutes away. We splashed out all our remaining euros on gifts, and of course the Disney soundtrack album! We then headed to the rainforest cafe to go for our last dinner followed by a wander around the lake before heading back to our hotel for our last night.

Tomorrow we head back to Bristol, overall, it has been a great holiday seeing lots and lots of sights along the way.

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 through picturesque scenery until we hit The Millau Bridge. We stopped off at the view point where I made my PAs push me up a steep hill up onto a viewing spot looking out onto the bridge.

After this we carried on our drive to Claremont Ferrand through a thunder storm which was quite cool and it dropped to the coldest temperature of the whole holiday! 15.5 degrees! We arrived at our hotel in the late afternoon where we chilled out and then went for dinner.

Tomorrow we head further north to Meaux on the outskirts of Paris, stopping at the Disney village to pick up gifts and eat in the Rainforest cafe again before our last day of driving home.

Nath