Jim Morrison's Bidet
I once stayed at the Hôtel de Medicis in the Latin Quarter of Paris. It's at 214 Rue Saint Jacques, near the Luxembourg Metro station.
Some time later I learned that I had stayed in a nearly identical room just upstairs from where Jim Morrison stayed in 1971! See my page on Travel in France for more details, including a chronology of the places Jim lived in Paris in 1970 and 1971, pictures of some of those places, and some pictures from Cimetiere de Pere Lachaise where he is buried.
Below are a couple of views of the interior of my room at l'Hôtel de Medicis. The room had a green ceramic sink and a bidet. The toilets and showers are all down the hall at l'Hôtel de Medicis.
Another page on my site has more detail about the hotel and lots more pictures of the places where Jim Morrison lived and is buried in Paris.
At left you see the green pedestal sink and bidet.
You cannot complain that the bidet fails to provide its user with a fine view of the adjacent buildings (and vice-versa)!
Below you can see the washbasin, bidet, and radiator in greater detail.
Also see the dedicated page for more about bidets in general.
Rose George's The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters is a fascinating description of sanitation conditions around the world. "2.6 billion people don't have sanitation. [....] Four in ten people have no access to any latrine, toilet, bucket, or box."
In September 2009, Morna Gregory and Sian James published a book titled Toilets of the World. It's pretty much the same theme that you find here — photographs and commentary on other people's plumbing.
The Porcelain God: A Social History of the Toilet, by Julie Horan, contends that civilization began with the toilet.
Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing, edited by Laura Noren and Harvey Molotch, has essays by anthropologists, sociologists, and architects on the importance of the toilet, especially for urban dwellers.
Latrinae Et Foricae: Toilets in the Roman World describes the toilets of the Roman Empire from Iberia to Syria, and from North Africa to Hadrian's Wall in Britannia.
Toilets, Bathtubs, Sinks, and Sewers: A History of the Bathroom, explains the history of personal cleanliness and hygiene to children in grades 5-8.
| A Sani-Flush blue border indicates a toilet that I've used. |
How long have my Toilets of the World pages been around? I'm not exactly sure, although they started in the mid 1990s as a single page on a Purdue University server. The Internet Archive Wayback Machine lets you see what that looked like as far back as January 17, 1999.
My cromwell-intl.com domain appeared in September, 2001, although the Wayback Machine didn't notice its one enormous Toilet of the World page until January 17, 2002. Some time soon after that I split it into categories, and the collection has grown ever since.
In December, 2010 I registered the toilet-guru.com domain and moved the pages to a dedicated server.
If you're not bored yet, you might be interested in (or at least tolerate):
