Europe for Visitors Blog

Vacation renter trashes apartment

ABOVE: A more appropriate San Francisco vacation apartment for "DJ Pattrson."

We learned about this incident via a Facebook Travel Bloggers Group post by Michela Simonici:

In Around the World and Back Again, a blogger who goes by the initials "EJ" describes renting her San Francisco apartment to a stranger through airbnb and coming home to find it robbed and trashed:

Violated: A traveler's lost faith; a difficult lesson learned 

Fortunately, such horror stories aren't common. If they were, the vacation-rental business wouldn't be as huge as it is. But if you're ever asked for references when renting a holiday apartment, or if the proprietor demands a hefty security deposit or a credit-card number, EJ's experience may help to explain why the landlord or landlady is being careful.

Photo: Stephan Hoerold.

Special Needs at Sea

ABOVE:  A wheelchair in Venice, Italy. 

We recently learned about a company that offers a variety of useful services for disabled or chronically ill cruise passengers and travelers.

The company, Special Needs at Sea, is a "one-stop source" of wheelchairs, mobility scooters, wakers, oxygen rentals, hearing-impaired kits, and other items in more than 55 cities and ports around the world.

Special Needs at Sea works with a number of major cruise lines (including Azamara, Carnival, Celebrity, Costa, Cunard, Holland America Line, Oceania, Princess, Royal Caribbean International, and Regent), but it also delivers equipment to hotels, resorts, conference centers, and theme parks.

For more information about Special Needs at Sea and its services, visit the company's Web site at www.specialneedsatsea.com.

Sage advice for travelers in wheelchairs

ABOVE: An accessible water bus in the Venetian Lagoon. 

Sage Traveling offers "comprehensive accessibility information for the European traveler." Although it's a work in progress and has a few gaps here and there, it's the best site of its kind that we've run across, and it has the advantage of being written and edited by someone who travels around Europe in a wheelchair.

For information about traveling by wheelchair in more than 40 European cities, go to Sagetraveling.com.