One of my hobbies is answering questions in ITN’s “Person to Person” column. I usually average one each month, enjoying sharing my intel even for an audience of one or two travelers, but my answer to a recent info request — about traveling with limited mobility (Nov. ’17, pg. 60) — covered a lot of ground, and I thought it might interest many travelers in the senior category.
Travelers with limited mobility planning to visit the Czech Republic will benefit from the new brochure “Four Accessible Walks in Prague.”
Covering the city’s most famous landmarks in Old Town, the Castle District, Lesser Town and Vyšehrad, it has maps with icons indicating terrain information, levels of accessibility and available facilities for both the mobility-impaired and wheelchair users.
In Toronto, visitors to the highest freestanding structure in the Western Hemisphere can walk outside along the circumference of the tower’s restaurant’s roof, 1,168 feet above the ground, on the EdgeWalk.
During the 20-minute EdgeWalk at the CN Tower (301 Front Street West, Toronto, Ontario, M5V 2T6, Canada), trekkers are strapped into safety harnesses, allowing them to lean over the roof’s edge. For the mobility impaired, EdgeWalks utilizing a specially designed wheelchair are available.
Mobility-impaired visitors to the Spanish city of Barcelona can visit the website www.barcelona-access.cat/accessible to book accessible tours of the city plus find tips and travel guides on where and how to visit popular sites, use public transportation and find accessible hotels.
Mobility-impaired travelers to Italy can plan trips that meet their needs with Accessible Italy (Via C. Manetti 34, 47891 Dogana, San Marino; phone +378 0549 941111, www.accessibleitaly.com).
The company assists in finding accessible hotel rooms and also will transfer travelers to and from airports, train stations and ports or to their destination of choice in a wheelchair-compliant van with English-speaking driver. Manual and motorized wheelchairs can be rented.
My husband has some mobility issues, tiring easily, which means he cannot do a full day of walking and touring, so our visit to Rome on Oct. 25, 2015, was a challenge to plan, that is, until I discovered the possibility of touring Rome by golf cart.
For my trip to Sweden, I wanted to visit more than Stockholm. Being handicapped by a lack of tech savvy, let alone a computer and Internet access, I needed some help.
In 2014, after having seen it advertised in ITN’s Mart classifieds, I took a group tour of the Baltic countries with Scott Jercich’s Vertical Horizons Travel (Folsom, CA; 888/995-1016, www.verticalhorizonstravel.com). I was still receiving Scott’s newsletter and noticed that he could assist, so I called him. Soon we had a program laid out.
Dear Globetrotter:
Welcome to the 476th issue of your foreign travel magazine.
The Lonely Planet eBook guide “Accessible Melbourne” highlights wheelchair-friendly restaurants, shops, scenic sites, activities and participatory sports in Melbourne, Australia, and offers tips for visitors with mobility, hearing or vision impairment. To download a free copy, visit www.lonelyplanet.com/accessible-melbourne and fill out the online form.
I was very impressed by Kathryn Tisdale’s description of her Europe trip and her tips for the mobility impaired (Jan. ’15, pg. 18). However, I do have a couple of related suggestions for London, which I last visited in December 2014.
I avoid the hop-on, hop-off buses. They’re expensive, they have no shelter on the top deck and, from reports I’ve read, it sounds like you can sometimes wait a long time.