Sunday 24th January, 2010

Last night we went out to dinner again. Not sure that my waistline is going to cope with all of these dinners but the scales in the hotel are broken so I guess that I have at least 2 months until the containers arrive and I see the conclusive evidence that I have gained weight.

Anyway, last night in the restaurant, when I went to the bathroom, I noticed that on the doors, there was nothing as boring as Homen (men) and Mulher (women) denoting men and women. Instead they had Flip Flops nailed to the doors. Large blue ones for the men and smaller pink ones for the Ladies. I wouldn't have thought anything of it except that it made me think that the previous evening, in a different restaurant, it had been a pair of stilettos for the ladies and men's shoes for the men.

I then started to think about bathrooms in other countries we have lived in. In the Philippines, they are called Comfort Rooms. If you look around for a sign, chances are it will say CR rather than WC.

In Istanbul we regularly used to go to the SwissHotel for Sunday brunch. A visit to the bathrooms at the SwissHotel was an event in itself. The SwissHotel was ( and maybe still is ) owned by the Japanese and we all know how the Japanese love gadgets. Well, the bathrooms in the SwissHotel were an institution in their own right. Would you like a heated seat, spray, jet or mist of tepid , cool or hot water. And why not have a massage at the same time? No wonder there was always a queue.

Sweden as you can imagine was sterile and functional. A list of do's and don'ts and probably the threat of a fine if you got it wrong.

France, well, we all know the stories of holes in the ground. They have changed over the years to the more respectable, more comfortable style, but a hole in the ground would confront you just when you were most desperate and there were no alternatives.

So I look forward to seeing how many other pairs of shoes I can find in Sao Paulo. Who knows, I might even try them on for size.