The Clean Loo
Guide to Rome
(this page in nice
sterile white and blue colour scheme)
There's some jolly nice restaurants in Rome, but visit their toilets in the middle of your meal and you could quite lose your appetite. Most public toilets in Rome are pretty disgusting. We won't go into details...
More things you didn't know about
Rome, Number 16 - On Monday mornings they turn off the Trevi Fountain
for cleaning. Moral? (a) Don't expect to get a good photo of it
in action on a Monday morning. (b) Feel free to relieve yourself
in it on a Sunday night - you won't find any other public bogs
fit to look at for miles around.
Indeed, public loos are pretty far and few between in Rome, and those there are, are either filthy or have some old hag sitting outside with a collection tray, who you're expected to tip. However, RomeLife Website is here trying to compile a list of cleanish public bogs in Rome where you won't be expected to pay for the privilege of wading through someone else's urine. The catch is that not all of them are in restaurants.
For example, the best I've found so far
is a staff toilet in a hospital. The public toilet in the same
hospital is disgusting, but here are the directions to the clean
one reserved for the doctors:
At the north end of
Via San Gallicano in Trastevere, facing
north, either the last or last-but-one door on the left is the
back entrance to the hospital. Once inside, pass through the entrance
hall with the glass-topped collection chest in the middle of the
floor, and take the first turning on the left.
Look again to your left and you'll see the doctor's toilet door.
It's nice in there - cloth hand-towels ironed and folded over
the rails, clean floor, mirror etc. I have no qualms about using
it - shame on them for leaving the public toilet in such a filthy
condition!
Sometimes the first door inside is closed though, and you can't
get in without drawing attention to yourself. Obviously you must
be discreet and try to look as if you know where you're going,
or they'll throw you out.
We might also add at this point that
although Italian men are probably the most snappily dressed and
well-groomed on the planet, I have never seen an Italian wash
his hands after visiting the toilet. perhaps then it is wiser
to quickly adapt the local custom of kissing when you meet someone,
rather than shaking hands. It's interesting to note that the above-mentioned
ironed and folded hand-towels in the doctor's toilet did not appear
used. Either it was early in the morning, or...
That's all we have for now, apart from McDonalds of course, which
now has about twenty restaurants around town. McDonalds bogs are
generally pretty clean, and they're unlikely to throw you out,
but here again, be discreet, and at least try to make it look
as if you're a paying customer.
One of those automatic
"push'n'go" cubicles like they put up in Leicester Square
in the 80's has been sighted at the side of the Ostiense, an urban
dual-carriageway near the Basilica San Paulo, so good luck crossing
the road to get to it...
One of our Canadian correspondents
reports that 'Taverna Parione' is a heck of a good restaurant
on Via di Parione 38-39, (behind the church in Piazza Navona),
and perhaps more importantly as far as we at RomeLife are concerned,
has decently clean toilets. It's closed on Mondays though, but
then again, so is most of Rome...
|