disabled

hi my husband and i are due to come to boston shortly for a holiday and we only have three days and my husband can not walk far is there plenty of seats around the areas for him to sit down now and again we are staying at the hillton bostan back bay hotel

disabled

You%26#39;ll find that as Boston is a walking city, it%26#39;s also a sitting city. Most park areas and open spaces have benches and there are lots of cafes and places to stop and have a cup of tea and recharge. While you won%26#39;t necessarily find benches everywhere, there are lots of them around. If you%26#39;re concerned, you may want to look into renting a wheelchair or ';lark'; scooter type thing for your trip or one of those walkers that has a seat built in if it%26#39;s a serious issue and you hope to cover lots of ground.

That said, there are plenty of cabs. The T isn%26#39;t very disabled-friendly. They say they are and I%26#39;m sure they%26#39;re workign on fixing it but there are lots of stairs at most stations. Sometimes escalators are broken for days at a time. The stations that have elevators ... by the smell of some of the elevators, it%26#39;s safe to say they double as toilets. Cabs are a better bet for someone with mobility issues.

disabled

For sightseeing, you might consider a Duck Tour or one of the trolley tours described on this site. Both will give you options seeing the city without walking.

I second the trolley tour suggestion- they take you to pretty much right in front of the major sites, so you can get off, check out the site, and then get back on and sit down and head to the next site. You land much closer to sites than you do just taking the subway.

We recently hosted a visitor who had trouble walking very far, and we found it a challenge to navigate under those restraints as we usually would just walk from place to place with occassional subway rides.

I would not recommend renting a wheel chair ... maybe an electric scooter, but definitely not a manual chair.

My husband was wheel chair bound for several months late last year and early this yer due to an accident. We regularly do things in Boston and for the sake of our children, tried to keep up as much of a normal routine as possible.

Only SOME of the T stations are chair-accessible. And, as another posted pointed out, even those that are often have problems. Often times you%26#39;ll find that curb cuts are NOT in conveneient locations, you have to walk into traffic to use them. AND, on more than one occassion (the corner of school and tremon comes to mind) I almost LAUNCHED my husband out of the chair cuz you start down the %26#39;slanted%26#39; curb cut but where the sidewalk meets the pavement for the street ,there%26#39;s a lip and the chair catches on it and tips forward!

I think if you want to see the sites, the Trolley tour is your best option ... the on and off priviliges help a lot and they bring you to all the key sites. And ... you don%26#39;t HAVE to get off ... you can ride by several sites and listen to the driver%26#39;s patter.

Good luck planning and enjoy your trip.