Meravista.com’s intrepid explorer braves the bathrooms of various establishments and comes to the conclusion that Portugal has the cleanest toilets in the world. While we question how many countries have been surveyed, we felt you may enjoy reading our explorer’s rather off-the-wall review.
Every morning after breakfast my dad would take the daily newspaper and read it for an hour on the pot in the back bathroom. So I was behaviourally conditioned to follow this tradition. However, I can’t find the resolve to stay more than ten minutes at a time.
My reading is more varied too. I keep a rotating selection of books or New Yorker magazines at each toilet in the house. My current stock in rotation are: “Shattering the Myths of Darwinism,” “The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe,” (guess which of those two books is ripping the other to shreds?) “The Periodic Table: A Field Guide to the Elements,” and a primer on Russian swearing called “Gavno”.
Needless to say I know bathrooms, and I have to say, without any reservation, that Portugal has the cleanest, most accomplished restrooms in the world. You can walk into any…any…little hole-in-the-wall-bar in the Algarve and it will have both a ladies and a men’s restroom, motion sensor lighting and all are 
spotlessly clean. You smell nothing but freshness. Always fresh towels and the wastebasket is practically empty every time.
It is hard to convey how astonishing it is to me to see such fastidiousness in an establishment who’s success or failure relies so much more on the front end than the ‘backend” (If you catch my meaning). And to cede more space to the lavatories than to the business area itself is yet another testament to worship these porcelain gods receive.
It’s not easy snapping pictures of restrooms; even in Portugal. Algarvean courtesy can only take so much. But I was able to get the restrooms in a tiny bar in Montenegro. Look at this magnificent beauty. Not only do you get the usual clean set up, but you even get a chair for when you don’t feel like relieving yourself or if you just want a place to sit and cry or possibly drink really alone. Or maybe the chair is there so your buddy can sit and keep you company. Regardless, how often do you see a chair in the men’s room? Huh?
And not only can you wash your hands inside the restroom itself, there is a communal double wash basin area where all the sexes can mingle and exfoliate. All of this, again, is twice the size of the bar itself.
It’s not just social drinkers that get good restrooms. The Portuguese are generous in this regard. Any town with more than ten buildings or, especially, a church, will have public restrooms right in the town square. The two town samples below – Santa Bárbara de Nexe and Estoi – both have their restrooms in the sublevel beneath their mother churches (Igreja Matriz). Orlando – the wisest person in the Algarve – told me that each had been the town jail cells before being converted to restrooms. Oh, the things that have gone on in those little rooms over the decades!
About the only unclean bathroom I have ever encountered in Portugal was at the Lisboa Airport. I guess we can all figure out that one for ourselves, yes?
Compare this to the restroom I encountered two years ago at a truck stop in Northern England. You would be better off with a hole in the ground.
There is one place in the world where the restrooms are equal to Portugal’s and that is Buc-ee’s in Texas. Buc-ee’s is a chain of gas stations the size of small airports. They have 126 gas pumps and an equal amount of toilets.
They regularly win awards for the restrooms and brag about it in their signs along the motorway. I couldn’t take a picture inside the restrooms there because most everyone urinating was armed to the teeth. Texas, y’all.
[Image supplied – 55 ice machines and Potty time Buc-ees]
I don’t believe that I have ever been to any place other than bars in the Algarve, so I cannot vouch for them, but I assume their bathrooms are just as good. So either fly to Texas and get shot, or go to an Algarve bar and head straight to the can.
Meravista.com’s disclaimer
‘In the world’ must be taken in the same context that the USA has the Baseball ‘World Series’. On other words it is not a scientific survey.
It must also be noted that our ‘intrepid explorer’ looked up in surprise when asked why he did not mention the paper bins next to the toilets in most Portuguese public bathrooms. Apparently he saves his reading time for at home, and has never had occasion to decide what to do with used toilet paper in an Algarvean public loo.
