Our trip to Verona was the inaugural international trip with my new zippy light-weight electric power chair, which is made by a Canadian company called “Travel Buggy”. Chris and I have nicknamed it La Freccetta., which means “dart” or “little arrow” in Italian. The chair’s new name riffs on the real name of the high-speed train in Italy called La Freccia (“arrow” ).
So you can get a sense of what it looks like, here’s a photo of me in la freccetta in Piazza Bra in Verona:
Anyway, back when we went to Vancouver in April this year, a woman had extolled the virtues of using the Travel Buggy chair, and she was right. It was a great decision to use it this time in Verona, since I can’t walk that far anymore, and this gave me the freedom to tool around on my own. For example, when Chris did errands I spent a lot of time hanging out in the plaza near the St. Nicholas church and taking photos, like this one:
One of the real positives of having la freccetta was that with it Chris and I were able to explore more of Verona, since we didn’t have to worry about my stamina giving out. Plus — unlike in Vancouver where we used a manual “transport chair”, Chris didn’t have to push me everywhere. So that helped save his stamina, too.
Overall, though, I have to say that Verona — at least the city center, where we like to hang out — was a bit of a challenge for accessibility and using la freccetta. For one, the city center has very narrow sidewalks, meaning that you wind up having to walk in the street a lot of the time, which is a problem on busy streets where the cars just speed by. Those very busy streets with lots of traffic were definitely an issue for getting around in la freccetta. (Note, though, on some streets in the city center, where the cars had to go slower due to the number of pedestrians walking in the street, it was a lot less of a problem. FWIW, I also found that while driving la freccetta on these streets I could easily dodge potholes and tourists in my path. Also, I was originally concerned that the cobblestones in Verona would be tough to navigate with la freccetta. As it turned out, cobblestones weren’t a problem at all, although I did feel every bump along the way, despite the suspension in the chair. But it really wasn’t that big a deal.)
By the way, there are sections of Verona outside the city center that have wider sidewalks. The wider sidewalks were easier to travel with la freccetta, including in the section of town that’s pictured below. Borgo Trento. We visited that area of Verena for the first time on this trip, and it was quite pretty. We might consider staying in that area or something else outside the city center to see if it’s a little bit calmer to use la freccetta. As much as I like to stay in the city center in Verona in order to be close to our favorite sites and restaurants, there would be something to be said for having a calmer exit and entrance into the hotel, since getting in and out of the hotel this time onto a busy street was definitely the worst part of the experience of using la freccetta.
Anyway, the other big issue with using la frecetta in Verona was getting into restaurants, cafes and shops. You see, most doorways are not accessible without going up at least 1 step, as shown in this photo of the entrance to our favorite restaurant below:
But, our motto was always Ce la facciamo “we’re managing it!”. And so we did. 😉
Chris figured out strategies to handle getting me and la freccetta into every place we wanted to go. Yay!! Thanks, Chris! Chris also would lend a helping hand (or arm) whenever I needed to step out of la frecetta. For example, to get into some restaurants, it was necessary for me to step out of the chair and walk up the step(s) — that allow the chair to be brought into the establishment without my sitting in it. Lots of people lend a hand with this: some of our friends, as well as some very helpful shop owners, cafe workers, etc. Plus, random customers also helped on occasion – certainly, everyone was very friendly and willing to offer help! It was great that everyone was so helpful as I could never have gotten in and out of places completely on my own. (Of course, that’s true in the US as well, even though a lot of stores do have flat entrances that don’t require any steps to get up.)
Now, I think it’s really too bad that with all the reconstruction in the shops in Verona’s city center that more work hasn’t been done on making entrances to shops and restaurants more accessible. Doorways have been widened in these places and windows have been enlarged, added, or enhanced. Here’s a photo of some of the window display in our favorite deli shop. At the bottom you can see that it is a traditional type of building with the marble (under may foot). You can’t really see that what I’m standing on there is a step to navigate to get into the shop, but you get the sense of how the traditional step is below modern windows.
So steps to get into the places remain, even when the rest of the front of the store has been remodeled. A few of the locals that commented said that re-doing the entrances and eliminating the steps would be “too much of a change” to the historic buildings.
But I disagree, given other changes that have been made to the original buildings. (I should also note that there were a couple of buildings that had been remodeled to add more accessible entrances, just not that many. Plus, one shop actually had a portable ramp that they put out as needed.) So, solutions exist, but not everyone has taken them. Ah well.
Anyway, even if I found challenges visiting Verona with la freccetta, I would do it again in a heartbeat. From my perspective, using la frecetta was great and gave me the mobility to allow us to enjoy our time in Verona. Of course, I was the one “along for the ride”, so to speak. But what a fun ride it was! 🙂
P.S. Stay tuned – more about traveling with La Freccetta coming soon!