Paris has public toilets in the streets: oblong kiosks about 3m long by 1m wide; the signs claim that they automatically wash themselves after every use. They cost 2 Francs (about $0.28) per use. In response to the bombing of the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001 they closed them all. Most public places have no place to urinate; most private places limit use of their johns to customers. I kept a look-out for likely public restrooms but took New York leaks 3 times.

In this page I present places I discovered. Please contribute any you have.

• The shopping center at Place d'Italie has a nice public toilet on the first floor.
• One need not buy a ticket to use the Louvre's public toilet but one must wait in the line through the metal detector.
• Public libraries and Mairies (the seats of government of the arrondisements, Paris's districts) have toilets. I don't know if the Mairies want the public to use their toilets. I never asked; I searched them out on my own. Look upstairs
• Some churches. Stop to say a prayer for the reopening of public toilets.
• Some parks, though not most. Wandering around one day I could not hold it any longer, ducked into a little park, looked for a place where I could go unseen, but found it full of workers and visitors. Then I stumbled onto a john. One of Paris' biggest parks, my favorite, Buttes Chaumont, has an outdoor urinal. Despite this amenity I saw a guy letting it go in public there.
• Some cemeteries, including the most famous, Père LaChaise.
• The Bois de Boulogne, a large forest inside the city limits, has lots of discreetly located trees.

From Wine, Women, and War: A diary of disillusionment (New York: J. H. Sears and Company, Inc., 1926), an American soldier's memoir of World War 1, 'Thing I'll miss most is institution, found on every street corner, where demands of Nature conveniently if publicly answered.' (page 237)

Paris accommodates dogs better than humans.

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You can find this page at: http://alumnus.caltech.edu/~rbell/France/Pissing.html.gz

© 2001, Russell Bell