The Good Loo Guide

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The Good Loo Guide - Europe

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Denmark

Bryggeriet Apollo, Copenhagen

This is a brew pub just off the Town Hall Square in Copenhagen. If you have 66 Danish Kroner (or a fortune in any other currency) you can come here to drink a reasonably nice dark ale. The bar upstairs is okay but downstairs is much smokier and friendlier. The toilets themselves are quite interesting, clean and vaguely pleasant but with an enormous copper sink and make-up mirror. Very strange and, together with the price of the beer, fairly disorientating..

Eire

Jury's Inn, Cork City

Big, basic hotel loos, handily placed for the bus station. A half of Murphy's and a visit here beats any visit I've ever had to a bus station toilet (as a class, worldwide, the worst places to go to the toilet).

France

Epernay- Moet et Chandon

The visitor's toilet (before the tour) is a small civilised affair, very much in keeping with this grande marque. Brown or grey marble, clean and understated and within touching distance of over one million bottles of champagne.

Orgeval- Moulin d'Orgeval

Not sure where the windmill is, but I've never been so surprised in my life as when I cam upon a Versailles of a lavatory in red with mirrors lurking underneath this pleasant but hardly opulent hotel.

Paris- Access Academy, St. Germain-des-Pres

Having spent the weekend suffering from raging food poisoning, how glad was I to dart into this inviting Internet cafe in Paris' student quarter. How much more delighted to find brand new, fully-operational, sparkling white facilities. Perhaps I'm seeing it through rose tinted glasses, but a haven. I'm afraid I didn't use the internet facilities as well, but to make up for it, I shan't hesitate to recommend you try it out for that purpose too.

Paris- Oresto, Perrot-Levallois

Very superior by the standards of French restaurant loos, much the best I saw while there. This is a great part of Paris too - it's amazing how much more pleasant people are to you when you get out of the centre.

Reims- Chateau Les Crayeres

If you are keen to learn more about French military uniform and how it developed over the period from 1859 to 1861, then this is the toilet for you. Very stylish and nice expensive wallpaper, very much what you would expect from an upmarket hotel like this. Apparently the ladies' has an escritoire: very useful indeed! Away from the toilets, the champagne flows and the food is exactly like you would expect: nice but very fussy.

Germany

Hannover - Hall 17 & Hall 13, Hannover Messe

An interesting experience visiting these cavernous toilets. I was going to review the whole site but some halls were much less pleasant than others. These two are a cut above the other, older halls. Anyway, Hall 17 has these fantastic towel machines which take about a minute to reclaim the used towel and make a noise like a Ferrari while doing so. Very confusing, almost terrifying, when you are the only person around. Hall 13 is clean, sweet smelling and new, almost everything automated. Check out the slightly offputting way the towel holders react twenty seconds after use.

Greece

Pelion (Mainland) - Hotel Sofokles, Agios Ioannis

Pelion, a charming wooded peninsula in northern Greece, has not quite joined the 21st century in many ways. Some of these, like the friendly smiles, goat herding and booze prices, are welcome. Others, like the general standard of toilets, are less so. Hole-in-the-ground style toilets, which I thought were limited to French service stations, are worryingly common. There is also the frankly disturbing Greek practice of putting the paper into a bin. (If anyone can tell me why Greek plumbing is so uniquely specialist that it cannot cope with loo paper, I would be extremely grateful). Into this situation, like a breath of fresh air, comes the Hotel Sofokles. Even if it weren't situated right on the beach, we would happily have come for our daily dio Mythos just for the privilege of visiting its clean, white-marbled loos. You still have to do that thing with the bin though.

Pelion (Mainland) - O Yiorgias, Vysitza

What a relief, in a remote mountain village, with a special historic preservation order no less, to find O Yiorgias (or Georgias depending on your transliteration preferences). All those things we take for granted at home but so rarely find in this beautiful country.

Samos (Islands) - Archaeological Museum, Vathy (Samos Town)

In the new wing of the museum, along with the enormous korous statue that is its pride and joy. Nothing special, but modern, clean and much more pleasant than most of the bar/restaurant toilets on the island.

Italy

Venice - Marco Polo Airport

Extraordinary that the only loo we found worth mentioning in Venice is at the airport. The public ones are actually nicer than the ones in the business lounge, although the new terminal has retained the disconcerting automatic flush. Power to the people!

Poland

Warsaw - Fukier, Town Square

Poland is a country that believes it lies at the very heart of Europe. As with all capital cities, of course, loo standards vary. However, at the very heart of Warsaw, lies Fukier. From the outside, an ordinary bar with plastic seats in the square. Inside the decor becomes rather more bacchanalian. The toilets are downstairs. I found the correct door easily but, thought I was mistaken. Where was the toilet? Finally I spotted it, across a veritable savnnah of plush carpet, candles, and flower petals, a single toilet perched in the corner of the room. In this reveiwer's eyes, this is simply the most refined loo it is possible to find anywhere in the world. Truly the greatest toilet in Europe.

Portugal

Lisbon - Insituto de Vinho Porto

Shining like a good deed in a naughty world, the Instituto de Vinho Porto combines comfortable seating, clean, crisp toilets, and port starting at about 60p a glass (when last visited). On a wet and windy weekend in Lisbon it was the only thing that kept us sane. Unmissable.

Porto - Taylor's Port Lodge

To be frank, I'd had a bit too much of the local speciality to be able to remember much about this by the time I got up here (Porto basically consists of 2 very steep slopes either side of a river). Go anyway. It's got free port and peacocks too.

Slovakia

Bratislava - Bridge over the Danube

Here the men's toilets are particularly spectacular. The bridge itself is huge and if you go up to the cafe at the tall end, it's an interesting opportunity to travel in a lift that doesn't move vertically. However, the view from the men's urinals is quite amazing with views out over the old quarter and the parts of town that were demolished building the bridge. The glass walls are slightly offputting but no-one can see anything from hundreds of feet below.

Turkey

If, after a poor holiday experience, you have leapt on this link in the hope that we have found a nice toilet in Turkey, I will have to disappoint you. We cannot recommend any loos we have been to in Turkey. Our experience suggests that even outwardly quite civilised places have loos ranging from poorly-maintained to filthy. There is also a pernicious practice of charging for using them. Even in restaurants and bars where you have already paid to eat or drink. Sometimes they even hand your paper ration out at the door as well.

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