Loo Blues? Find public toilets across the world
Written by Jacinta Lodge
We’ve all had those moments – standing in a foreign city, knees squeezed together as you try and work out if you have enough money to buy a coke so that you can use the toilets of the cafe across the street. Public toilets, as has been discussed here before, can be a bit of a hit and miss affair (my personal advice: do not, under any circumstances, consider using the airport’s toilets in Hurghada, Egypt) and simply finding some can be a challenge in itself.
Thankfully we can turn to some online databases to help us locate toilets.
Broken Toilet by borges,
Good Loo Guide
This site is a personal guide to the best places to visit the loo, go to the toilet, visit the “restroom”, or “bathroom”, in various places throughout the world.
The Bathroom Diaries
This has been online since 2000 and includes 12000 toilets from all over the world. Users can add their own toilet discoveries to it. Some entries haven’t been updated in a long time (they predate the introduction of the Euro), but it’s a great start and the Golden Plunger awards for the best bathrooms are worth checking out.
PublicToilets.org
A simple database which is user generated and covers a variety of countries across the world, but not as many toilets as the other sites. This also includes entries such as “My place, ring the doorbell marked Arnold” which, although amusing, I’d probably bypass.
Find a Toilet UK
The lack UK public toilets has been covered before, and now someone has decided to help us out of the dilema. Findatoilet has 3700 public toilets in the UK documented and is not reliant on user input for growth. Search the database by going to the mobile phone link – which of course also means you can search direct from your phone. Exactly what you need when you haven’t checked it out beforehand and find yourself hopping up and down on one leg.
Diaroogle
Now it isn’t Europe, in fact it’s only one city specific, but Diaroogle is a new database for public toilets in New York. The entries are practical and slightly more unusual than you find in the other databases including, for example, The Museum of Sex and the US Bankruptcy Court.
Jacinta, it would appear that my own interest with this essential but often overlooked topic, is permeating to other members of the blogging team with this post in quick succession to Anna’s tale of a toilets search in a Stockholm Cemetery yesterday.
So it would seem! Perhaps you need a break-away blog specifically for latrine issues?
Jacinta, I could not cope with another blog, Also i noticed that The Bathroom Diaries has an essay section for those wishing to express themselves more fully.
Rest assured everyone, I’m not posting any toilet-based content anytime soon =)
That’s a great relief Andy.
Seriously I think it is a topic which needs to be kept in the public eye, in the hope that local authorities and tourism boards realise it’s importance to locals and visitors but saying that I wouldn’t like Europe a la Carte to be know as the bog blog.
oy, this has been a toilet week over at EALC! Sorry guys!
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
You guys reeaally need to catch onto these things Travelloos they are great for us girls, you just use these and pop them in the bin. Soooo much better than those disgusting loos you come across when travelling. I just use the cubicles now and don’t touch anything else except my travel loo. Not the best of subjects I know:-) but you’ll thank me!:-)