Travelers Offered Eau De Toilet Guide

Travelers to France long have relied on guidebooks to find the best hotels and restaurants. Now, a new work offers evaluations that may be even more helpful - the restrooms of Paris.

“Gogues en Vogue” - French for “Fashionable Johns” - includes descriptions of bathrooms in 98 Paris restaurants, bars and nightclubs and awards toilet bowl cleaner icons for cleanliness and toilet bowl seats for scent.

One of each, the book explains, denotes toilets of an “apocalyptic to mediocre” purity and a “pestilential to unbearable” odor. Three of each, meanwhile, denote “sensational to astonishing” cleanliness and an “inebriating to captivating” scent.

The book comes out in a country of hygienic extremes. The capital’s cafes often offer only seatless Turkish toilets - two footprints and a hole - while its green self-sterilizing public restrooms have been known to inspire awe and envy.

The book’s lowest ranking went to the Cafe Monte Cristo, a Spanish-style restaurant-bar on the Champs-Elysees.

“As I try to make my way through the salsa dancers, the situation starts to fall apart,” the researcher wrote. “There is no clear distinction between the two doors for a simple reason: They have been ripped off.

“But the strong stench allows me nonetheless to determine that’s where the bathroom is.”