4. Closer and closer to reality

With the itinerary planned it was essential to get our flights booked and to confirm that the airline was equipped with an on board aisle chair. Most domestic flights use an aisle chair to get mobility restricted passengers to their seats but don't actually carry the chair on the plane. On a flight to Bali a few years back we were informed that he just couldn't go to the bathroom and if he had to then I would have to carry him. WTF??!! 

Going such a long distance we were confident that there would be a way, but we were obviously a little tentative and without getting too personal the many online searches we did seemed to all suggest that mobility restricted passengers should take measures (in dwelling catheters) to not have to leave their seat for the duration of the flight. 14 hours stuck in the seat was not an option.

Dickey's parents, being avid travelers had recently flown with Emirates and had done a good scope out on the A380 determining that there was a toilet that could be opened out to fit a wheelchair in. Good news! In consultation with our travel agent we secured our flights. Qantas/ Emirates code share on the A380 Melbourne - Dubai. Dubai for the night, then Dubai - Budapest. Flying out Thursday April 21st 2016 arriving in Budapest on April 23rd. The day before my 37th birthday. The trip was to celebrate Dickeys 40th birthday (which had been in March), but I was getting Budapest for my birthday. A double celebration!!

After a few calls to Qantas we were confident all would be ok on the flight. It was little positives like this that were giving us confidence that the trip really would be a success.

For our internal travel our plan was to use trains as much as possible, have 2 internal flights in and out of Croatia and in Italy we would hire a car so we could explore Tuscany and surrounds as well as follow the gold ticket event of our trip the Giro d'Italia! Our travel agent secured our flight from Venice to Dubrovnik and Dubrovnik to Barcelona and we were grateful to have her educate us on a little trick... A return flight was cheaper than one way, so we had returns booked to Venice, but didn't use them, and then the one-way to Barcelona. These were with smaller carriers and we had to just cross our fingers and hope they would cope with the wheelchair! We also had to be aware of the 20kg luggage restriction on the internal flights, despite the 30kg international limit. No major shopping til we arrived in Spain!!

Our train research was exciting, confusing and also intriguing! We were advised to purchase a Eurail pass, but this would be 900 euros each, which we thought sounded pretty hefty as we didn't have a huge number of trains we needed to catch. I think if you were travelling every couple of days it would be worth while, but not really for us. There were online forums suggesting last minute tickets were cheaper, some people mentioned discounts for wheelchair users and mostly there seemed to be little indication that pre-purchased passes were going to be necessary. With that information we made the decision to organise our train tickets every time we arrived in a city. ie: The train from Budapest to Prague was booked on the day we arrived in Budapest, etc, etc.

The car hire was another major hassle and cause of much stress. Dickey is a brilliant driver, and loves the independence it affords him. His car is equipped with hand controls at home and he knew it was possible to hire cars with hand control adapters fitted. This plan suited me, as a very content passenger and not one to typically volunteer to drive! After many many emails, contradictory replies and pieces of advice we discovered that there were absolutely NO hand control adapters available in Italy! We had a couple of companies assure us this was possible, only to turn around and disappoint. Just four weeks til departure our last hope was dashed and we had to make the decision that I would hire the car and do the driving in Italy. I had driven from Germany to Italy return on snow frosted roads in 2007, so it was time to take the challenge and do it again! While we did have a solution Dickey was disappointed to lose this freedom, and ability to share the driving load. We had to just accept it as a hiccup and move on. Jumping forward, what we managed to discover while away is that Germany and France do offer adapters, and had we known this perhaps we would have shuffled our plans and picked up the car to drive from Munich down to Italy. Hindsight...!