Originally posted to Posterous on 28 April 2011
I had feared the worst about wheelchair access in Paris, but mostly, I have been pleasantly surprised. Paris is a city for walking, and generally the footpaths in central Paris have been manageable, with kerb ramps at intersections and pedestrian crossings. Cobblestones, where they appear, are challenging, but still mostly OK to traverse at low speed.
The tourist office advised that the tourist boats and buses that take visitors around central Paris are not wheelchair accessible. Access to the boats on the Seine is via steep steps; the tourist buses are high floor buses without ramps or lifts. However, the public transport authority, RATP (http://www.ratp.fr) offers many wheelchair accessible bus routes, and publishes detailed information on a website at http://infomobi.com, including downloadable maps of accessible bus routes. The accessible buses are frequent and cheap with low floors and ramps. And entire routes are accessible - not just selected buses on certain routes. The buses we have tried so far have wound their way through impossibly narrow streets, giving a great view of street life. Tomorrow, our aim is to circumnavigate Paris by bus, taking in Montmartre, the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower.
Another pleasant surprise has been free and priority access for persons with disabilities to museums and art galleries. We have visited the Louvre and the Centre Pompidou without paying entry fees, nor (and this is far more important) queuing to get in. The queue for the Louvre when we arrived early on Monday morning was several hundred people long, but we were ushered to the priority access entry, and didn't need to wait at all. Normally, I'm not a fan of 'special' access, but avoiding the Louvre queue was impossible to turn down. My companion joked that the free access was probably to compensate for not being able to see anything past the hordes of people in the museum, but we were ushered (again!) to the front of the crowd to see the Mona Lisa, and had the best view in the house. Magnifique!