European Road Trip – June/July 2013

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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