Free travel booklet has sense of urgency

Ah, those great family vacations, those romps through cities and lazy days on the beach, those warm evening theme-park fantasies.

And every one of these will include a nature hike. Even in the middle of Paris or Rome or New York. Because here’s a hard-and-fast rule of family vacations: When nature calls, you take a hike.

Now, no less a seasoned traveler than Arthur Frommer steps in to address this basic element of tourism, bringing it into – I apologize in advance – full relief.

The great guidebook writer has authored a 76-page booklet called “Where to Stop & Where to Go.” It came out sometime during last summer’s vacation season, but I didn’t pay it much mind; at the time, I was preoccupied trying to find a restroom in Singapore.

Frommer didn’t write “Where to Stop & Where to Go” specifically for family travelers, although the book is perfect for anyone traveling to 19 urban hot spots in the United States, or to our four most popular national parks: Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and Great Smoky Mountains.

He partnered with the pharmaceutical company Novartis, which published the booklet and will send it to you without charge. Novartis makes one of several medicines used in the treatment of OAB – overactive bladder – a condition affecting 33 million Americans.

Frommer says travelers with overactive bladders “have been inexcusably neglected by travel journalism.” (I would expand that to travelers in general.)

Once he overcame his initial timidity about posing restroom questions to city officials, hoteliers and the like, he says “it was replaced by a sense of dismay over the failure of many U.S. cities to do enough to enable their residents or visitors to conveniently perform these basic human functions.

“As a nation, we lag far behind other wealthy countries in creating public restroom facilities,” Frommer writes. “The number of U.S. cities with nonbeachfront, restroom kiosks on their streets can be counted on less than the fingers of two hands; it’s as if the need to go to the bathroom does not exist.”

In “Where to Stop & Where to Go,” Frommer skillfully ties the attractions of a place to basic bathroom information.

He offers some general tips:

•Look for national retail chains which, to their credit, keep restrooms available for everyone.

•Carry an emergency $5 so that you can buy a bottle of water or a pack of gum when confronted by a restroom “for customers only.”