Mysteries, Challenges & Poor Design

Some things I’ve found in my international travels:

In all three of the hotels I’ve stayed in while traveling in Italy there were mysterious cords hanging down in the shower. The first hotel in Rome had 2 cords and I pulled them both to see what they were for and nothing happened. When I came across cords in Florence & Venice, once again I pulled them and nothing happened. When I asked Jim what he thought they were for he said maybe they were for an emergency. If so, they sure don’t work because nobody came. There are also exhaust fans that mysteriously come on at any given time. Don’t know how to turn them on or off.

The toilets are also different. When I was in Tunisia, many of them didn’t have a visible tank. I guess they were inside the wall but what the heck happens if there’s trouble? How do you get to it if you need to stop it from running or if the chain gets stuck or falls off? In my various international travels, it’s sometimes a challenge to figure out how to flush. Sometimes, when there’s a tank, there’s a button that you push in, other times there’s a foot pedal that you step on, and still other times there’s a big panel on the wall that you push. Also in Tunisia, there was a coiled steel hose coming out from the wall for cleansing but luckily, most of the time (but not always) there was also toilet paper available. I personally think the hose is a bad & dangerous idea because almost all the time the floors in the stalls were wet & slippery. Before pulling my pants down, I’d have to roll up the bottoms so they wouldn’t drag the floor and get wet. One of my co-workers said she fell down in the stall when she slipped on her high heels. When we travelled to Cinque Terre & Jim and I had to go to the bathroom, a little shop said they had one and it was a hole in the floor. I also experienced this in Mexico & Japan. In Japan some of them have an actual toilet seat on the floor and I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to actually sit on it or not. When you gotta go you gotta go but it sure is hard getting back up! And you better be careful that you don’t drop anything!

The showers are always a challenge, not just figuring out how to turn them on but trying to get the pressure right, the shower head in the right direction and the water to drain can be tricky. A lot of times, the floor ends up all wet in the process. Sometimes the showers are in the corner of the bathroom with no tub or lip on the tile and you’re lucky if there’s a shower curtain to keep the spray from going everywhere in the closet-sized room.

In my opinion, the toilets in a lot of places are very poorly designed. There’s only a little bit of water in them and most of the time they don’t flush all the way. So many times, I’ve been so grossed out at restaurants that I’ve gone to because there are such huge piles of toilet paper in the bowls that there’s no way they can be flushed. Even sometimes in the hotels, they don’t flush properly even if you try twice. And I won’t get into the skid marks. I feel sorry for the housekeepers at European hotels!

Excuse me, I have to pee --- (written on the train from Venice to Rome – use your imagination about the toilets on the trains) – to be posted when I get home Wednesday or Thursday….