While sporting sweaty spandex and helmet hair, I toured the excessively lavish castles of beheaded royals and other aristocracy, which clarified for me both why the French commoners revolted, and just how far bathrooms have come. While I walked through dozens of palatial bedrooms and parlors outfitted with fine tapestries, painted portraits in gilded frames, carved marble fireplaces and ornate ceilings, I did not see one bathroom. Because.
They. Didn’t. Exist.
No royal flush, for sure. Even Chateau de Chambord, the valley’s largest chateau with 426 rooms, had no bathrooms. So, imagine that the residents host a lavish dinner party with guests all festooned in ermine furs, pearls and silk, seated around a bedecked dining table, then, heaven forbid, one guest needs to powder her nose? I did see a chair with a built-in chamber pot.
Thankfully, today French bathrooms are commonplace, yet they still fall short of American standards. While I find much to love about France – the food, the fashion, the fragrances – I have nightmares and daymares of getting stuck in one of their public bathrooms. The toilets don’t have seats.
The lights turn off automatically when it’s not convenient. The floors are often wet, why, and uneven. Windows, it seems, are outlawed, and the ventilation hasn’t advanced since the Middle Ages.
Whenever I return from there or any foreign country, I thank heaven for American plumbing. Don’t take it for granted. Coincidentally, I came home to find t.
