Let’s talk about toilets today. Yes, you read that correctly, I said toilets! I don’t want to talk about everyday ordinary toilets that we are accustomed to but rather toilets I have seen in France. On my first visit to France I had arrived at the home of my friend, Claire. I needed to use the bathroom. I went in and used it and when I was finished I reached for the handle to flush and there was no handle! I looked everywhere and there was no handle to be seen. I had never seen a toilet without a handle to flush but I wasn’t going to let this get the best of me. I knew there had to be some way to flush it. I searched and searched looking for a clue. At one point I was even down on my hands and knees in the floor looking for a pedal or chain or something and still nothing. Finally I decided to do the only thing I knew to do and that was to lift the lid on the tank and pull the chain inside to let the water out to flush the toilet. When I lifted the lid imagine my surprise when the toilet flushed!!! I thought to myself, “NO WAY!” that can not be the way they flush toilets here. I lifted the lid again and once again it flushed. Oh my! Then I noticed a little silver thing on top of the lid. It looked like a lid to a shampoo bottle. That was the flush knob! I had never seen a toilet like that. In order to flush the toilet you had to lift that silver knob. During the course of our visit I saw all sorts of toilets with different flushing mechanisms… some you had to pull the knob on the lid while others you had to push the knob and still others had chains to pull from a tank that was located near the ceiling, high above the seat. I didn’t see any that had handles like the ones I am used to seeing in the USA. The toilet in the photo below takes the prize for the most different type of toilet I have used. This one was located in the Orange Colliseum in Orange, France. You place your feet on those raised parts and squat down. Oh and of course there is no door for privacy. Very different indeed!
