Chris and I traveled to Bolzano, Italy — the town in Italy where we used to live —for one night and part of two days. I didn’t take a lot of pictures of shops or restaurants. But here are couple of photos of Piazza Walter, which is near where we used to live. The statue is of Walter (a traveling poet) himself; the cathedral shown in the second photo is on the edge of the piazza:
Thw piazza was very accessible, as there were no steps of any kind. 😉
As for accessibility elsewhere in Bolzano …
In one part of Bolzano’s historic city center, many of the entrances have actually been remodeled to be accessible. Those places had doors that automatically open and shut for you, and there are no steps or ledges to get into places – the entrances are just flat. Yay. This was true of the cafe where we met our friend V. The bathroom there was also very accessible. It even had “pocket doors” which were quite common for bathroom doors in a variety of places in both Verona and Italy. That style door makes it very easy to open and close.
However, going beyond the bathroom doors and talking more generally about stores, not all of the shops in Bolzano have entrances that have been remodeled. For example, we went to a restaurant that requires going up several stairs to get into the building. On a side note, I found it funny that this restaurant required steps to get into the building, but once inside it had an accessible bathroom that had been added (separate from the rest of the bathrooms which required walking down to the basement ). I.e., while the restaurant wasn’t accessible to get into, once you were in the building, there was an accessible bathroom.
Anyway, the most historic shopping area in Bolzano (called the portici) is in an historic structure where the entrances have not been remodeled to be accessible. Even though other aspects of the buildings have already been remodeled (e.g., windows, doorways, etc. So, just as in Verona, the historic structures do get remodeled, just not always made accessible.
BTW, both in Verona and Bolzano, the main department stores (which are part of the same national chain) had been remodeled to add accessible entrances, wide elevators within the buildoings, and wide aisles within each department. This is actually made for better accessibility than I’ve experienced in our local department store in Connecticut. While the CT store has an accessible entrance, it has very narrow aisles that are impossible to roam around in while driving la freccetta. I know this because I tried using la freccetta there before our trip.. Interestingly, the department stores in Italy were all easy to drive around.
I should mention that during a trip to New Jersey in June, the tourist places and parks we visited were very accessible, so it’s not that everywhere in the USA is difficult with la freccetta. Thanks to J and J for making that very first trip with la freccetta possible – and for finding some cobblestones in NJ! Finding cobblestones in the USA is actually a challenge, so it was great to see how la freccetta would handle that kind of surface before we went to Italy.)
Anyway, here are a couple of scenic touristy photos that I was able to get on that trip – I didn’t take a photo of the cobblestones in the street that J and J found for me in NJ, though.
So parks and tourist areas in the USA may be more accessible than department stores in the US, based on my very limited sample size;-)
Anyway, I didn’t actually go into a supermarket in Verona or Bolzano, but Chris reported that the tiny little supermarket where we got some supplies in Verona had very, very, very narrow aisles. I just stayed outside.
I haven’t really talked about the hotels in Verona and Bolzano, as well as the hotel we stayed in for one night at the Munich airport on the way back. All the hotels were fairly accessible, but then again I had picked them because they were supposed to be accessible. The hotel in Verona had a very small elevator, which made it a challenge to get in and out of with la freccetta, but it was doable. The department stores in Bolzano and Verona, and the hotels in Bolzano and Munich both had recently large elevators. But probably the smalles elevator we encountered on the trip was in the apartment building in Bolzano where our friends N and GM live. It was so tiny, it wouldn’t fit la frecetta while I was sitting in it (we had to fold it up to get it in the elevator). The elevator is so tiny that a regular wheelchair that one of their relatives use doesn’t fit. It was crazy small! So, clearly, the size of the elevators can be an issue for accessibility that I hadn’t thought about. It isn’t just enough for there to be an elevator available.
But the airport hotel had a nice big elevator, so that wasn’t an issue, nor was getting around the hotel in general. Here I am in la freccetta traveling though the spacious hotel lobby on the way to the hotel restaurant.:
Coming up in Part 3: the experience of planes, trains and automobiles with la freccetta.