When Visiting France

Have some 1 Euro coins.  Most public restrooms require payment,  often one Euro or 1.50 Euros.  If you have a tap credit card, this will work.  The money covers cleaning and maintenance.   They were no cleaner or better maintained than American public restrooms.  I think American businesses just see this as a cost of being a public building.

Those of you old enough to remember Erica Jong's Fear of Flying, a slightly naughty book of the 1970s may recall her depiction of European nations by their toilets.  

None that I saw in France fit her description at all.  Her description of French toilets as being two places to put your feet with a hole between was nowhere apparent.  In Geneva, however, we walked through a park where one of the restrooms was in fact a hole in the ground with no seat, not even a rudimentary one. This was not a pit toilet. I am pretty sure this was intended for men as a urinal.  Women for whom this would be useful would best fit  into Jong's novel.