Mar 8, 2016 3 min read

I’m back from Italy and had a terrific trip full of beautiful sights, delicious food and nice people. My fellow travelers and I had many laughs, and some of them had to do with cultural differences in things like plumbing.

You have to pay to use public bathrooms in some places, and this gets to be unavoidable if you are a tourist walking around sightseeing all day. We ponied up the 50 cents or one euro in some spots to use the facilities. A few restrooms were automated and opened the door after you deposited money. One such machine in Pisa kept opening and closing the door on us even as we were still inside.

We realized that if you go into a restaurant or bar and pay two euros for coffee or wine, you are allowed to use the restroom as an added bonus. That seemed like a good deal to us, except for the one bar in Florence that wound up having no toilet at all. They had a bathroom, but it didn’t contain a toilet – only a hole in the floor. I’m not a business owner, but I’m pretty sure that if you charge someone to use your toilet or for a drink that includes use of the toilet, you’re supposed to provide a toilet. I could be wrong.

Our hotel in Siena was outstanding and used to be a castle, built around 1100. I’m certain there was no indoor plumbing then, so the facilities have been updated substantially. We walked into the bathroom to find a commode with the tank mounted three feet above and pipes hidden in the wall. There was a metal rod sticking out of the bottom of the tank, so we figured you either push or pull it to flush. We pulled when we should have pushed, and the metal rod fell out with no way to reattach it. Maintenance was off for the night, so to flush our toilet we had to put one foot on the bidet and the other on the toilet to climb and reach into the tank and pull the lever. As for bidets, they were everywhere, and we used them just to cross that off our bucket list. We’re still not sure if we had the proper technique.

Two bathrooms did not have shower curtains or doors, so water went everywhere, and you had to mop up the floor after your shower. One setup had the shower right beside the toilet, which gave the toilet a wash-down every time you showered. Maybe this is a timesaver for the maids, but the toilet was not porcelain, and erosion had already begun. Maybe this wasn’t the best design or choice of fixture material.

We ended the great plumbing tour of Italy on a high note in Rome, where they invented sewers. Our room there had a wonderful whirlpool tub.

Kristin Emery can be reached at kristinemery1@yahoo.com.