The whole gang (and some extra tourists) at the Opera Garnier!
Happy Bastille day! I haven’t written a post since Versailles kicked my derrière, but I’m trying to get back to it! This week we saw a lot of fun, interesting places, including the Opera Garnier, the Opera Bastille (where we watched the ballet adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which ruled), THE Eiffel Tower, the Place des Vosges, Les Halles, and more! But today I don’t want to write about any of that! I want to write about bathrooms!
I’m really hoping I lured you in with the Garnier picture. Now read about toilets.
Now I know that sounds a bit crazy (and maybe gross), but there’s actually a lot to say about French bathrooms, I think. Public restrooms in Paris are very different from the ones in America, in a way that caught my attention pretty much immediately. Generally speaking, there’s much more privacy here (except for some outliers, but I’ll get to those later). Instead of stalls with less-than-an-inch thick partitions and nearly half a foot of open space at the bottom, most bathrooms have thick walls that stretch all the way from the floor to the ceiling. It’s completely private, which I consider a much better philosophy to bathroom design than that used for the flimsy stalls in the US.
Paris is also a lot older, and a lot more cramped than American cities. Because of this, most places like bars or restaurants only have one or two restrooms with one toilet each. Several places have the sink and hand dryers outside the bathrooms because there simply isn’t enough space. Sometimes they are so small that you have to all but squeeze between the walls to get to where you’re uh… going.
Number 1 or number 2?
Speaking of “where you’re going,” the toilets are different here too! There’s no lever to flush, instead it’s a button on top of the toilet. Most of these buttons are divided between a “big flush” and a “little flush” depending on what type of job you just did. That’s just good water management! Why waste a full flush-load of water every single time you use the bathroom when you could divide it based on your needs? That just makes sense!
Les Fontaines terrible men’s bathroom. The thing on the right is the “door.”
I have, however, seen some less than ideal bathrooms since I’ve arrived. In particular, yesterday at a bar called Les Fontaines by the Stravinsky Fountain. The “men’s room” was hardly a bathroom at all, but just a small square room with three urinals—and no dividers. On top of that, it didn’t really have a door. Instead, there was a slotted screen that allowed for virtually full visibility of everything happening inside. The “door” didn’t even reach the floor, and it couldn’t lock. The women’s bathroom was a lot more like the other one’s I described (or at least I assume it was, because it had a door that did its job and I couldn’t see inside).
“Everything alright over there?”
Another interesting design choice, privacy-wise, are the bathrooms at the dorm we’re staying at, Résidence André Honnorat. At the end of each hall are two bathrooms, men and women’s, with one toilet each, separated in the middle by a wall. But not really. The wall separating them doesn’t actually reach the ceiling, so you can hear when there’s someone next to you, which is always a fun experience. And if there’s one toilet per bathroom, why even divide it by gender anyways? The doors lock from the inside, so it’s not like anyone will ever walk in on you. Very bizarre, if you ask me.
Overall, French bathrooms are better, I think. The better privacy (usually) and more efficient use of water are definitely some things the US could stand to have.