Hotels accessibility – Italy trip

All public areas and facilities are wheelchair-accessible, except for the swimming pool. You’ll have to climb quite a few steps to reach it, and there’s no pool lift.

The wheelchair-accessible room is big, with a raised bed, plenty of room, and two separate bathrooms, one of them accessible and equipped with grab bars and emergency cord. The shower bench, unfortunately, is dangerously tiny. A small oversight – many hotels mount refillable soap/shampoo bottles to the wall to reduce plastic usage and be more ecological. That’s amazing, but they were only mounted to the wall in a non-accessible bathroom, leaving me without soap or the ability to take it with me into the accessible bathroom.

The hotel is in a great location, only 5 min walk from Milan’s Central Station, from which you can easily commute to Malpensa airport and anywhere in Milan or Italy.

The main entrance has a step; you’ll have to call/send someone to the reception to open the side door. The hotel is affordable, modern, and clean but on the small side. The wheelchair-accessible room is just big enough for a wheelchair. The bed frame isn’t raised, and the shower bench is impossible to use (it’s closer to table height than chair height). The shower is step-free but there are no grab bars and the sink is too low to roll under. Since I have help, we made it work, but for solo wheelchair travelers, this hotel isn’t accessible, in my opinion.

A beautiful, small, ecological hotel in Mestre, 15 min from Venice. We loved everything about this hotel! The location (2 min from a bus stop and supermarket, 10 min from the train station), the vibe, the service, the affordability, and how well it’s maintained. The hotel offers private parking for a fee (significantly cheaper than parking in Venice).

The wheelchair-accessible room has a lowered swipe key lock, a step-free shower with a shower chair, a roll-under sink, and emergency cords. There are no grab bars in the shower, only one next to the toilet, the bed frame isn’t raised, and the mirrors are too high for a seated person. Although not big, the room was comfortable to navigate in a wheelchair. 

A small, affordable hotel in the heart of Florence’s Historical  Center. Florence prices can be very high during the summer, and this hotel was a compromise between accessibility and location+price. If you travel by train, the hotel is only five minutes walk from the Firenze Santa Maria Novella train station. If you travel by car, the hotel doesn’t have parking but has an arrangement with a garage (7 min walk from the hotel) for 24€ a day instead of 30€. In general, don’t enter the Historical Center unless your hotel notified the authorities, it’s considered a limited zone, and you will get huge fines.

Like many small hotels in Europe, the main entrance has a step, and I was let in through the service entrance. The building is old but nicely renovated. There’s no wheelchair-accessible restroom in the lobby. The elevator is big, and the breakfast area is spacious and easy to maneuver.

The wheelchair-accessible-according-to-their-definition room is for 3, nicely decorated in classic Florentin style, with a double bed and a sofa bed. The room is small; we had to move the double bed for me to squeeze in between in my wheelchair. The sink is accessible, and the shower is step-free and wide, but there’s no shower chair or grab bars. They brought me a metal chair from the dining area to shower. Again, it worked for us, but always check if it suits your specific needs.

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