How to judge a bathroom
VIRGINIA, Jan. 1 — In judging toilets, cleanliness trumps design and convenience every time.  While elephant scat thrill safari guides and coprolite fossils electrify archaeologists, in most settings, human debris is an unwelcome form of communication.  In fact, only a loaded weapon is greeted with more dismay. 

Other considerations for good restrooms are: safety, handicap access, changing tables (anyone who changed his/her baby on an airport floor will agree) and hours of operation. Unisex bathrooms are helpful both to parents with young children as well as to our pre-and post-op trans-gendered brothers and sisters

So we know what we want, 
but how do we find it? 

This website holds the answer.  The Bathroom Diaries has scoured the globe to rate the world’s toilets.  Few would visit a country without some advanced information, yet our tender bits—our very “heart and soul,” as it were, are exposed to uncharted territories with no help or assistance.  At our most vulnerable, we are blind.  Well, no more.

This site grew from a vision.   Six months pregnant with a two-year  old in tow, I went to Paris for a month. We toured an unprecedented number of toilettes on our journey.  Some were wonderful, floor-to-ceiling well appointed water closets; others were old-school Turkish toilets with boot-treads carved to denote foot position.   As I stood with each foot carefully balanced on the prescribed mark, I dreamt of a world in which menus of restrooms were posted in the window along with the bill of fare.  Would it be haute cuisine or steak tartare today?  

Upon my return, I decided to create such utopian world, virtually (as is the way with all successful utopias).  After all, the internet is powered by good citizens of the world, ready to spread helpful, arcane, yet precise information.  With their gallant assistance, I would list and rate all the public bathrooms in the world.

Since its debut in 2000, The Bathroom Diaries has amassed over 12,000 bathroom locations from places as mundane as a QuikTrip in Des Moines and as exotic as a bamboo hut in the middle of a Balinese goldfish pond.   From feng sui serene to funky bohemian to cutting edge science, bathrooms are as varied as snowflakes.