Weekend trip to Albany! We went to see an exhibit at the New York State Museum called The Great New York Motorcycle Show, and really enjoyed it. We were very lucky with US Airways – four flights, and the gate agent preboarded me every time, and the flight crew were relaxed and happy to stow the chair on board – it was a big relief not to have to argue with anybody.
The hotel was not as good – my husband pushed for cheaper accommodations than I was really comfortable with, so it was a mixed bag. We requested a wheelchair accessible room. You could reach the room from the parking lot, but the door was too narrow for the wheelchair and was one big step up. It turned out that there was also a door into the hotel, which would have been a fairly long push from the lobby, but not too bad. The bathroom had grab bars but a tub. A shower chair was provided (wow), but it was too large to fit into the tub! Then there were just general cheap motel things – no shampoo, too few towels (and they all smelled burned, for some reason).
The Museum itself was pretty accessible, which was more than we could say for any of the restaurants we went to. Our friends took us to Jack’s Oyster House, which had wickedly slippery floors but good food.
A special treat was being able to sing with the choir of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Delmar New York. What an extremely friendly and welcoming congregation! Again, sadly, the church was mostly inaccessible – there was a ramp from the parking lot, but as far as I could tell there was nowhere in the nave to place a wheelchair, and there were stairs both between the nave and the altar rail, and between the altar rail and the altar. There were also stairs up to the choir room.
