In September I spent 5 days in the beautiful city of Paris. I went there to spend some time with my girlfriend and her family in their home city before she moved with me to Stockholm. I’m usually not a person that cares too much about traveling to cultural or historical cities. More of a tropical guy. My time in Paris was very enjoyable. Although, this might of course be of the amazing company I had. Jokes aside, it was a beautiful city that really lived up to its’ hype. When it comes to the accessibility side of the city, it really has a long way to go.
TRAVEL
I always book my flights with Norwegian if they have my destination. For starters, they are usually one of the cheapest options. The quality of the airline and the smooth booking process really makes you forget it’s a low-cost airline. Furthermore, stacking those flyer miles is always something to have in mind. The whole reason I even mention my airline of choice is because during the booking phase you can already select what type of assistance you need to board the plane. With other airlines you need to call them beforehand and make sure they note your needs. To be honest, I have never ever done this, but I think you are supposed to. I just show up at the airport and let them fix it at the desk. It has never not worked so why not travel the way everyone else does. It is a great feeling that Norwegian recognizes the different needs of people and create a stigma free environment while booking.
Now CDG in Paris was… Interesting. It has a cool design but oh boy does it make hard for people in wheelchairs. Basically, the building of the gates and the main building are connected by a tunnel. Sure, maybe the tunnels saved some space or whatever. But the tunnel forces you to take one of those flat escalators that make you walk faster in airports. First it goes down quite steep and then up quite steep in the end. I can’t hold onto the handle, so I am forced to have someone hold my wheelchair because there are no elevators. Even if someone holds my chair it is quite uncomfortable because I lack balance. Furthermore, you are not even allowed to go on this by yourself or with a friend. This means that when we travelled back to Stockholm, we had to wait for an airport assistant to walk you through the whole airport. Takes away from your freedom. I don’t care about it too much myself, but I know this can be really important for some other people with various disabilities.
PUBLIC TRANSPORT
My girlfriend lowkey had a panic attack while trying to plan what to do in the city. Paris has over 300 metro stations and of these only 9 have elevators. Trust me, I didn’t forget a zero, it is really only nine. Apparently, there is a line called RER A and RER B which take the number up to about 60stations that are accessible, but these are trains for the outskirts of Paris. The metro is by far the easiest and fastest way to travel around Paris so it is horrible that so few stations are accessible.
Don’t give up on Paris quite yet though. All of the busses have mechanical ramps that come out of them. Entering and traveling by bus was obviously quite slow but these are the most accessible busses I have seen in my life, so I’ll cut them some slack on the metro. On some stations on the bus it says that they are not accessible. I don’t know why though. I looked at multiple of these stops that were supposedly not accessible but couldn’t identify anything wrong with these. In the worst-case scenario that the bus can’t take out its ramp just get off one stop later, it is like two or three blocks only.
In addition, there are trams on ground level, and these are really easy to just roll into. When it comes to tickets, I really don’t know how it works. Sometimes we paid for tickets on the bus and sometimes not. Highly unclear whether it was free for disabled people or not. For times that the bus is too slow, Uber is your best friend. In Paris Uber was quite affordable, small note here though is that the car traffic in Paris is a joke. It is constantly congested.
I made a quick Google search to see if it is possible to get from CDG to Paris by public transport. didn’t try it personally as my girlfriend’s father gave us a ride. It says that there is a shuttle train that connects to the previously mentioned RER train. Hopefully it gets you to a bus station so you can actually get where you are going.
Something else worth mentioning under public transport is how it is to get around town just by rolling. Honestly quite okay. All of the street crossings are lowered. However, I who lack some balance need to put all my wheelchair skills to use where the streets where harder to cross because of weird angles and corners. So, the streets were good but not perfect.
HOTEL
Before I talk about the hotels I stayed at I’ll give you a list of the hotels I found that have accessible rooms in a Facebook group for accessible travel. La parizienne, St germain, Villa artistes, Artus by mh.
The first hotel we lived at was called hotel F1 Paris Porte de Châtillon. It is about 45min away from the Eiffel tower (I’m just going to refer to this as the city center) by bus and tram. It is a 5-10min walk away from the tram and bus station. The hotel had an elevator and a nice accessible room. The accessible features of the room were a big bathroom with a roll-in shower and handles for the toilet. Just enough for me. I have lived in hotel rooms where I couldn’t enter the bathroom and had to use the big toilet by the entrance so as long as I can enter the room, I am fine to be honest. A big bathroom is just a bonus. The only thing to note here is that the room had no towels and no soap. I feel like we were lucky that we even had toilet paper. If you stay here, bring towels.
The second hotel we stayed at was called Lodge in M.I.S. It was a bigger hotel and much nicer. The room actually had towels this time! Jokes aside the only thing really worth mentioning is that the hotel is in the middle of quite a steep hill so would not recommend this if you are by yourself. The bus is 10-15 min away depending on how fast you get up the hill and it is about 50min to 1hour away from the city center.
EIFFEL TOWER
Now for the question you all wonder. The Eiffel tower is accessible, but only halfway. You can only get to the observation deck on the middle of the tower. It is a huge elevator that takes you there. The last elevator that takes you to the top is one floor higher up and is only accessible by stairs. For sure it sucks a little to not be able to reach the top, but I am more than happy to at least get halfway. For wheelchair users it is free, and you get to go first in all the lines. The view is breathtaking! My girlfriend said that the view from the top is actually worse because you can’t make out any details of the city. Hopefully she didn’t just say this to make me feel better.
ARC DE TRIUMPHE
Now this is a funny story. The short version, no it is not accessible. We checked the webpage before going there and it said that the monument was accessible by elevator. I mean they probably had an elevator but there was no way of actually reaching the elevator. Let me explain. The arc is surrounded by a roundabout that is about five cars wide at least. There is no way you can survive crossing this street because people drive like crazy in Paris. In the unlikely scenario that you are crazy enough to try and lucky enough to survive, you are greeted by a heavy chain going all the way around so good luck fellow wheelchair users. So how do walkers reach the arc? By a tunnel going under the car road. Elevators? Hahahah, no! only stairs. After having a deep conversation with my friend Google, I found out that if you go by car there is one parking spot for disabled people in the middle. So, it is fully possible to reach the arc by car or taxi as a wheelchair user. However, even if you do this the elevator isn’t actually taking you all the way up to the top. The last bit is 30-40 narrow steps.
The arc is such a funny and good example of things that are supposedly accessible but in reality, they are not. Accessibility doesn’t always mean adding an elevator or a ramp. The problem is quite more complex than that. It is something walkers would never notice but if you try to do it in a wheelchair it is so blatantly obvious.
DINNER ON RIVER SEINE
The last thing that I did that was touristic was taking a dinner cruise on the River going through Paris. This might be the most beautiful and romantic thing I have ever done. It is quite expensive, but it is really worth it if you can afford it. First of all, it is perfectly accessible by a ramp onto the boat. I don’t know if all the companies that have boats are accessible but the one I took was called “Paris: Evening Cruise with Dinner on River Seine. I booked it through a page called get your guide. https://www.getyourguide.com/paris-l16/bateaux-parisiens-dinner-cruise-t51059/
It starts just by the Eiffel tower. You are treated to a 3-course dinner with red and white wine and champagne. There are professional waiters and live singers. The whole atmosphere is so amazing. It is about 2,5 hours long and you get to see a lot of tourist places by the rives like Notre Damme and the statue of liberty. The ride ends perfectly timed with the Eiffel tower sparkling in thousands of lights. For real, I can’t recommend this enough.
Funny story from the boat ride. They go around taking professional photographs of everyone and then trying to sell them to you for some ridiculous price. The way they hook you is by printing out the pictures and letting you look at them for a while. For some reason the photographer didn’t make it to our table until like two minutes before we came back to the port. We looked at the pictures and chose three out of maybe ten. However, the guy never returned. We waited for a few minutes and then just grabbed the pictures and disembarked. I mean he already printed the pictures and me as an environmentalist couldn’t just leave the pictures there (of course we just enjoyed the free pictures). We start to walk away, and this guy comes running after us when we already quite far away. He was really attached to those pictures apparently. I still can’t believe he chased us for some pictures he already printed. Oh well. We aid we wanted to buy three pictures and he asked for cash. Seriously, who has cash in 2019? This guy then has the stomach to ask us to wait for him while he got the card reader from the boat. We had already ordered an Uber so if he hadn’t made it back in time, we would just have taken the Uber to the hotel. I still think of those pictures today, hope they are taken care of properly. Free stuff is always so much better, especially if you manage to rip someone off who is trying to rip you off.
Unfortunately, these were all the things we had the time to do as we spent the rest of the time with the family and friends of my girlfriend. I can really recommend Paris as a destination for people who enjoy beautiful architecture, culture and especially wine. As for us wheelchair users, no point going there unless you are with your significant other. Paris truly is the city of love.
// Conrad Hildebrand
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