Bilbao, Spain

I was invited to a friends wedding in Bilbao and made a weekend of the trip as I'd heard the food there was amazing. I travelled with two carers and partied hard at the wedding as well as exploring the city a little. There were a few complications on the plane which added to the experience.
We flew with easyJet and did all the necessary telephone calls beforehand so that they knew I was coming with a powered wheelchair. I was able to take extra luggage due to disability and they allocated me plus one carer at the front of the plane. This meant that the other carer at to sit further back but it worked out okay. Unfortunately, with the cheaper airlines plane got delayed by several hours and we were sitting on the plane for an extra two hours which caused me a lot of discomfort.

When we arrived at Bilbao it was a bit of a nightmare getting my powered wheelchair back which meant extra time sitting on the plane. When the chair did arrive there was a fault but thankfully it worked well enough to get us to the hotel and we were able to fix it in the morning. Getting a wheelchair taxi was relatively easy as we went to the taxi queue and they were able to phone for one.

We stayed at Hotel Ercilla which I booked through booking.com. This is always a risk as you can get a good deal but you then need to contact the hotel directly to make sure the room is accessible. The hotel was in the centre of the city which meant there were loads of places to eat.





The only downside from a wheelchair users point of view is that the lifts were quite small. The bathroom was great

I was really surprised at how easy it was to get wheelchair taxis, much easier than in the UK we were even able to phone for one at 3.30 in the morning when the wedding finished and it was there within 15 min. Click here for a link to the company that I used.






As we stayed in the centre of the city it was really easy to get around. A lot of the restaurants weren't accessible but you could sit outside. My Spanish isn't great so that proved a challenge.


From the hotel we were able to walk to look at the Guggenheim Museum. We didn't actually go in as running short of time that the building was quite spectacular.



The weekend went really quickly, thankfully the flight home had no complications and I'd love to go back there but maybe with somebody who spoke Spanishas I'm sure I would do better in the restaurants.