Finding Left Bank accessible hotels is not an easy task. Hotels in the Left Bank are generally housed in old neo-Classical buildings built in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. These buildings were built before there were any building codes or considerations about access for people with mobility issues. Consequently, there are few Left Bank accessible hotels. Most hotels in the Left Bank have at least one step at the entrance. Many have two or three steps to enter the building. After getting in the building, you may encounter challenges getting to the hotel rooms. There may be steps in the lobby. Sometimes there are no rooms on the ground floor and no elevator to the upper floors with hotel rooms. If there is an elevator, it may have been installed decades after the building was originally built. When this happens, many times the elevator shaft is in the middle of a circular staircase which results in the elevator to be too small for a wheelchair.

The hotel rooms in Left Bank accessible hotels generally have narrow doors into the bathroom. Occasionally a hotel has been remodeled and they have created one or two disabled rooms. The disabled hotel rooms will have wider bathroom doors and more space to maneuver in the bathroom. Some of them will have roll-in showers for wheelchair users. The bathrooms with roll-in showers may or may not have a stool or chair to sit on in the shower. Sometimes they will have grab bars in the shower, and sometimes they won’t. There may be grab bars near the toilet, but you should make sure they are on the side closest to the wall. Some hotels have grab bars on both sides of the toilets. If you are in a wheelchair, check to make sure the sink has enough room to fit your knees underneath it.

One way to find out this information is to call the hotels. There are a few challenges with finding out accessibility information this way. The first is that the person answering your call may not speak English well. While they may be quite familiar with phrases such as “how many nights” and “for how many people”, they may not be familiar with phrases like “grab bars”, “wheelchair user”, and “accessible entrance”. Additionally, staff members may not know exactly what the handicapped room looks like. On several occasions, I have visited hotels and the staff member working at the reception desk has been unable to answer questions about grab bars and whether or not a wheelchair can fit on both sides of the bed.

Another option to evaluate accessible hotels in the Left Bank is to send an email with your questions. This method also has challenges. Staff receiving emails typically want to respond in the easiest way possible. If you ask too many questions or ask questions that that they don’t have the answers for, you may not get any response at all. If you do receive a response back, the level of detail will vary according to the culture. My experience has been that Germans are the most detail-oriented and are the most likely to respond. They understand why someone may want to know which side of the bed a wheelchair can fit on and how steep a ramp is. Many other cultures are much less-detailed oriented and much less likely to provide adequate answers. Responses in European countries like France and Greece may be closer to single sentence responses that the hotel is fully accessible to wheelchair users.

The easiest way to find out accessibility information on hotels in this area is at SageTraveling.com. After spending numerous hours researching disabled hotels in Paris Left Bank, I found only 3 hotels with roll-in showers in the Latin Quarter area. In the summer of 2010, I visited all of them, took pictures, and wrote up descriptions of the hotels. You can find them on SageTraveling.com. I tried to provide all the information that disabled and elderly travelers need to choose a hotel. I described the entrance to building and whether or not it had a ramp or level access. I took pictures of the restaurant or breakfast room. I described the neighborhood around the hotel and whether or not it was quiet, had cobblestones, and was flat. I researched transportation options including nearby handicapped parking, proximity of accessible bus stops, and distances to Metro stations with elevators. Hopefully my descriptions help you to have a great accessible vacation in Paris!

Author Bio: View pictures of Left Bank Disabled Hotels, Left Bank Accessible Hotels, and Accessible Paris Hotels

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