There is a bath in this accommodation we booked for a week in the hills behind La Spezia, Italy. This is a bath in which you can do yoga moves, not because you want to but because it is a necessity to get into/sit in/shower in or bathe in. You can sit in this bath with your back against the wall if your knees are bent up under your chin. This gives you somewhere to rest your breasts whilst bathing which is handy but is not necessarily a flattering position to be in.
It is not quite as long as my torso when I attempt to lie down. It is just wide enough for the average body. If I had not lost 5 kgs on this trip, my body would be squished against the tapered sides. Said sides are very high, so high in fact that it is difficult to lower oneself down onto the raised seat without breaking ones tailbone. Oh yes, the raised seat. It has a seat which takes up ninety percent of the limited available bathing space (basically all the floor space not taken up with the plughole) and is just high enough, sloped enough and invisible enough that you invariably slide when you attempt to get into the bath. This means slamming your arse down onto the seat, slamming your arm down onto the side and screeching like a banshee. (grown ups should not fall down. It stops being fun after about 12 years old and I don’t bounce the way I used to). It has a plug hole which is currently filled with the heel of my left foot. Andrew brings me the kitchen plug and I jam it into the plug hole somewhat successfully. I only have to put my foot on it occasionally. When I have enough hot water to cover the seat, I attempt to lie down. When my head is on the edge of the bath my butt is on the taps and my legs are at ninety degrees to the wall. I am finally doing a yoga wall sit! Hoorah!
The taps are where the taps for a bath should be – just above the height of the bath. The problem with this bath is that the (handy removable) shower rose is just above that – essentially at privates height. Very convenient if one wants to stand in a bath with a raised, sloped seat and wash ones genitalia. Not so handy if one wants to wash anything above ones waist. This bath does not have shower curtain or screen so the toilet, bidet and floor are soaked whenever you turn on the shower rose. Oh, and it’s seven degrees in the bathroom. The kind of cold when all you want after a hard day of hiking is a warm bath or shower. It looks like we have both in the photo online when we booked it, but in actual fact we have neither.
The water comes out of this (handy, removable) shower rose at a dribble. It is very hot though which is a good thing except that we are paying for the gas by the cubic metre and the only way to heat the water is by gas. Therefore by the time I have manoeuvred myself into this bath without falling down, decided how to keep the water in the bath by means of a plug that doesn’t fit and a well-placed heel, and tried to figure out how to get both my torso and my legs in without knocking myself out, it has cost me more than any bath should be worth.
Other showers we have come across in our trip around Italy mostly include seriously small shower cubicles (where you have to keep your elbows tucked in or risk slamming against the shower screen over and over). Also seriously small shower cubicles with corner opening glass sliding doors. So instead of one sliding door along on side you have two super small sliding doors open from one corner. This allows a normal sized person to wriggle through the gap. It could be potentially embarrassing for any person who was a little more than average size and there just isn’t enough room in these bathrooms for a group of people with a crowbar to try to get you out.
We had a little side trip to England during this Italian vacation. Apparently in England they don’t shower much so the question of comfortable showers is negligible. This is true, a local I know well told me she only showers about three times a week whether she needs it or not. Now I’m not privy to the bathing habits of all Australians but I assume that like myself, people living in areas where it is hot/humid/dusty at least shower once a day.
I assume that all Australians living anywhere who exercise or have active lives also shower once a day. Perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps the world over, showering is optional and I am the strange person who showers every day. I can’t bring myself to not shower every day. I’ve tried. I can’t.
Just walking around the overheated English houses makes me sweat. I did an hour of pilates on the bedroom floor and sweated. I cooked dinner twice in a typical overheated English house in an overheated kitchen and I was sweating as though I’d been doing an old fashioned 70’s aerobics class (see fluoro lycra and leg warmers). We hiked in the freezing English coastal gale and sweated under our layers. There was no way I could go to bed without showering, but it was commented on as being completely unusual.
Perhaps Australians just sweat a lot. Obviously if you live where we do in Queensland then you sweat all year around. In summer you sweat just breathing. My clothes stink. My feet stink. My underarms stink. Even after sitting in an air conditioned office all day, I stink.
Perhaps it is simply the use of a bidet that makes regular showering unnecessary, although I haven’t seen a lot of bidets in England. Italy loves the bidet and there has been much fun had trying to figure out how to successfully use a bidet. I watched YouTube videos on bidet use that didn’t really give me the step by step instructions I needed. Essentially it’s a small toilet bowl without a seat with a plug in the bottom, a hot and cold tap and a spout. First of all, a PLUG? Who in their right mind wants to save the water used to wash ones bottom? You just want that water to go away as fast as possible without having to think about it too much. Secondly, the spout is never the same twice in a row. One dribbled water, one shot water across the bloody bathroom. One didn’t have a spout but four small holes in the porcelain that supplied four dribbles of water without much pressure at all. There is no soap and nowhere to keep soap on a bidet. Oh, and there are special use bidet towels that in some places look like waffled tea towels the size of a face washer, and in others look like handtowels. Not to be confused with any other towel since you apparently use these to dry said bidet-cleaned bottom. Then they hang up on a rack above the bidet. For a family, do they all dry their bidet-cleaned bottoms on the same towel? That’s a bit yuck.
I haven’t figured out how to successfully use a bidet. First of all, cold porcelain is not great in a cold climate. Secondly, do you sit forward facing the taps or away from the taps like on a toilet? How do you control the temperature or pressure of the jet if you sit that way? But how do you wash your private bits if you sit forwards? Either way you are straddling the cold porcelain with your legs whilst hanging your private bits over the bidet. (great for the thighs). In the case of the four dribbles, you would have had to actually put your bits on the plug for any water to hit your body at all, and then you would have been washing your lower back or belly button.
Travel toileting, showering and bidet(ing) are all just a bit of a mystery.
