Sorrentno

Going Home Our flight wasn't until 20:30 so we did some mooching around and then headed back to where we'd parked the car at Polio supermarket. It was going to take over an hour to drive to Ecovia so I thought I'd have one last Sorrento pee, ya know just for the memories. Dad checked out the public toilets and said the gents was going to be difficult and had no toilet seat, but the ladies looked do-able and it had a toilet seat. I jumped at the chance... an Italian women's toilet! I know how to make the most of my holiday... The toilet was at the end of a two metre long very narrow stall. I transferred to the loo and Dad took the chair and waited outside. He shut the door. Click. "I think that's just locked itself" Dad announced. "Really?" He tried the door and it wouldn't open. "Nope it's locked. Is there a panic chord in there?" Dad asked "Nope and I can't reach the door." Great, they don't have toilet seats,

General exploring It was Monday and we'd be flying back tomorrow evening, we were going to have dinner tonight at Da Gigino so we had a look around town. We went down some of the alleys and side streets. Again it was exactly how I had imagined Italy. It was generally the rear of shops, but the doors would be open, so I could see in. You would hear people chatting in Italian, mopeds were parked up that employees of the various shops had ridden to work. A side street would suddenly open into the outside seating area of a restaurant. We would walk down side streets with restaurants on one side and then an outside restaurant on the opposite side. Whenever you were near an outside restaurant (which seemed to be every few metres) there would be music playing. When there was a shop that wasn't a restaurant it would generally be a gelato shop. The streets are particularly unforgiving in these side streets. Think of the classic Hovis ad where the lad has got the bread in the basket of t

  Vasame Part II Dad and I went back to Vasame for dinner as it seemed like a nice place to eat outside, the disabled loo wasn't a deciding factor. Honest... We ate outside, it was early in the evening, the temperature had dropped to about twenty six degrees and there were hills in the distance. It was hell <- more sarcasm. My Italian experience was mainly about the food. Italian cuisine is my favourite, so I wanted to try Italian pizza ✔ I wanted to try Italian pasta, which I could now  ✔ off my list and I wanted to try an Italian  Tiramisu  ✔

Pompeii We were going to get the train with Adam and Ruth but they rang us the night before to say they'd met some locals who recommended we shouldn't risk taking the train. There is a gap from the platform to the train, the aisles are too narrow to fit a wheelchair and finally apparently there are two stops the train can stop at. If the driver is instructed, they will re-route the train at Pompeii Scavi and you will depart at a wheelchair friendly stop. If the train isn't re-routed  visitors coming from Sorrento will have to go down and up many stairs.  We arrived there and one of the employees asked us if we were going into Pompeii, we said we were and he said there were steps. We said we'd pre-booked the tickets and we were assured Pompeii was wheelchair accessible. He volunteered to take me and Adam on a considerable walk to get to a lift that would take us to meet Dad and Ruth. It would miss out some of Pompeii as there wasn't wheelchair access to some parts. S

I woke up the next morning and my phone wasn't on charge on the night stand as is usually the case at home, so I asked Dad if he knew where it was, and he didn't. I had an immediate nauseous feeling, my whole life is on that phone. "I can't believe I would have left it somewhere, it's always in my pocket, I never leave it on a table I put it straight back in my pocket." We logged onto Google and using Find My Android saw that it's location was behind the hotel, a few minutes walk away. Dad went to go and see if the taxi we went home in was there. It wasn't so he tried the 'play sound' hoping it would work. It said it was ringing but he couldn't hear anything, he was walking up to parked cars, staring in and listening for a faint sound. Nothing. However the phone that was under my bed was ringing clear as day! I shuffled up the steps on my ass and slid into the bedroom, it had fallen off the night stand onto the floor. It was reporting that

Gatwick The flights were departing at six thirty am on Thursday morning from Gatwick so we left home at midnight. It would take us about three hours and twenty minutes to get there and we were required to check in three hours before the flight departed. We anticipated some problems as the original flight we were booked on had been cancelled and we transferred to another plane, our extra leg room seats that we booked had been erased from our booking as well as the fact we were sat either side of the aisle now. There were no problems at Gatwick and check in was very fast as there were no customers yet. There was quite a small queue at security but as I'm in a wheelchair I was able to skip the queue, I was ushered through a gate, frisked and my chair dusted down. My leather man bag that had my laptop in and another item caused suspicion so it had to go through the scanner. The suspicious item was a deflated haemorrhoid ring... I like to blow it up and stick my face through the ring...

Before you read on, I want to make it clear I loved Sorrento and I hope to go back there again, but this time I will plan it better. Actually I didn't need the word 'better' at the end of that sentence. It's a fantastic place but if you're in a wheelchair and you don't plan it, hopefully you'll tell others on a blog so they don't make the same mistakes. My brother and his wife had booked a holiday in Positano followed by five days in Sorrento and asked my Dad and I if we wanted to join them in Sorrento, I think Dad had booked the tickets before they finished asking the question. He booked a wheelchair friendly apartment (DOMINO HOUSE - Il Casale) and booked flights with EasyJet. Flights initially seemed  cheaper with British Airways and flew from Manchester Airport which is far closer than EasyJet's flights from Gatwick. Everything seems to be an extra with BA though.  Would you like to sit down during the flight? Yes? That'll cost ya £50! Would

I'm Tom 👋 My disability is that I'm an idiot... Oh, I'm being told that's not my disability, it's just an unfortunate character trait. In that case I guess you could say it's because I had a brain tumour that has left me in a wheelchair and with a few other issues. Fortunately a very clever man was on hand to remove it with minimal damage to the brain stem. It was a Hemangioblastoma, this type of tumour is never cancerous but it may grow and press on surrounding tissues. The severity of mine managed to remain undetected until the neurosurgeon came face to face  with it and realised it was essentially inoperable. He gave me 48 hours to live if he didn't try to extract it, but > attempting to extract it, might kill me. It didn't! But it has left me in a wheelchair. I can get out of the wheelchair to transfer onto a chair/sofa/bed but can not balance and need the support of another person to help me to walk. They end up taking a lot of my weight because