Wheelchair Holidays : Rome

A Week in Rome

We stayed in the Hotel Universo, a well-positioned hotel with good wheelchair access. Rome is a beautiful, but noisy, crowded city full of magnificent buildings and sights. It's not a particularly good city to walk around unless you want to risk being mown down by one of the crazy Italian driver's. Suprizingly enough there are a number of wheelchair-accessible buses, which we travelled on when we visited the Colosseum and Forum. We also went to St Peter's in the Vatican City, the Sistine Chapel, Capitol Hill, the Trevi Fountain and many other amazing places before driving down to Naples. Driving in Naples is not to be recommended.

There are cars and buses bumper to bumper and mopeds and scooters darting here, there and everywhere. Our hotel in Naples was a welcome haven, sumptious and elegant, though not very wheelchair accessible. It was situated directly opposite the bay of Naples with the mighty Vesuvius smouldering away in the distance. Naples is one of the most crowded cities on earth and is dusty, crime-ridden and full of slums. It has high unemployment and the underground Mafia reign supreme. From Naples we took a day trip to Capri which was a complete contrast to Naples. I've never seen such beauty before. Perched on a steep hillside tiny houses mix with luxurious villas, colourful flowers and pine trees fight for space, souvenier shops line up alongside expensive designer shops, and the roads snake up the mountainside.

We hired a taxi for the day at a cost of £50 which was worth every penny as the driver, Benito, a big, strong man was happy to lift me in and out of the car and show us about. He pointed out the house, with its large outdoor swimming pool, where Gracie Field's lived. No wonder she chose Capri as an exile. It is paradise!

This was a holiday full of vivid contrasts. It was a bit of an endurance test at times, but like most things in life you've got to take the rough with the smooth.

Reproduced with kind permission of Belinda Sidebotham - C5

Wheelchair Holidays : Rome