We’re going to talk about bathrooms. Briefly mentioned in our Finding Accommodations article, this one topic deserves some serious attention.
Not because it’s the most glamorous travel topic — it’s decidedly not — but because after years of booking rentals and B&Bs across Europe and beyond, we can say with complete conviction that the bathroom is one of the most overlooked and underestimated details in the entire booking process. And ignoring it has consequences. Sometimes hilarious ones. Sometimes less so.
So consider this your friendly warning from fellow travelers who have seen things.
The First Rule: If There Are No Pictures, Ask Yourself Why
Scroll through almost any rental listing and you’ll find photos of the kitchen, the living room, the view from the balcony, the charming little reading nook by the window. But the bathroom? Sometimes it’s just… absent. No photos. Nothing.
Ask yourself why.
Hosts who are proud of their bathrooms photograph them. Hosts who are not, don’t. It really is that simple. So if the bathroom is conspicuously missing from a listing, rule one is: ask yourself what they’re not showing you. And rule two — always, without exception — ask for pictures. Most hosts will send them. What they send, or don’t send, tells you everything.
For us? More than once, those pictures have made the difference between booking and moving on. And one time, the host confessed they simply forgot to post the bathroom pictures and the bathroom was stunning!
Which means, bathroom surprises are not always bad, but realistically none of us wants the bad ones.
A Tour of What We’ve Actually Encountered
We don’t say any of this in theory. Here’s a sampling of real bathrooms from our real travels.
The Toilet in the Shower. Yes, you read that correctly. This was a bathroom where the toilet sat on a slightly elevated platform — and to reach it, you had to walk through the shower. Which meant that any shower also became a toilet shower, whether the toilet wanted to participate or not. The bathroom sink was also the kitchen sink.
We still think about it.
The Leaking Toilet. The host was unusually reluctant to show us the bathroom on arrival. There was a reason. The toilet had a significant, ongoing leak — the kind that requires constant attention and a permanently positioned towel. The host had been hoping we wouldn’t notice immediately. We noticed immediately, and backed out almost as quickly. We did receive all our money back.
The Star Wars Bathroom. Quite entertaining and completely unexpected. Everything — and we mean everything — was Star Wars themed. Towels, fixtures, accessories. Oh yeah, there were two separate toilet paper holders, one to the side and one in the front. The Force was strong in that bathroom.
Germany — Turn the Valves. The shower in this hotel room required locating and manually turning on two separate valves before any water would flow. There were no instructions. This information was not provided. We figured it out eventually, standing there confused in a towel, which is not the ideal problem-solving posture.
Note the valves nearer the ceiling. Two sets of valves for your shower.
Kyrgyzstan — Communal, Cold, Nonnegotiable. A communal bathroom shared across the accommodation. No hot water. At all. Not lukewarm. Cold. In Kyrgyzstan in the winter. We adapted for the week we were booked there.
Zurich — Glass Everything. The shower was in the bedroom. Full glass enclosure. No privacy from anyone else in the room. Architecturally striking. Kind of a curtain to have some privacy, that didn’t go all the way around the shower. Practically complicated depending on your travel companion situation.
The B&B With the Floor Problem. Not the floor you stand on. This place had three floors, with three bedrooms on the second floor — and no bathroom on the second floor. One bathroom on the first floor, one on the third, where a converted attic fourth bedroom sat with a toilet behind only a curtain. No door. No wall. Just a curtain. No pictures of this on the website. We asked. We got the answer. We booked somewhere else.
Bern, Switzerland. This rain shower was genuinely awesome — one of the best we’ve encountered anywhere. We filmed it. Naturally, we’re sharing the video – click here. But what we found out from the concierge was that a guest before us had apparently fallen asleep in the shower and inadvertently blocked the drain (our guess is that this would fall into our famous statement – drink responsibly). The resulting flood made its way through the floor into four rooms below. A beautiful shower with a complicated history.
The Mold in the Photos. And here’s the thing — we’ve seen actual mold photographed right there in listing pictures. Not hidden. Visible. In the shower. In the grout. On the tiles. Which means the host either didn’t notice or didn’t care. Neither is reassuring.
What to Realistically Look For
When you do have bathroom pictures, look carefully.
Old tiles that haven’t been maintained. Grout that’s darkened or deteriorating. Strange configurations that raise more questions than they answer. Fixtures that appear to be held together by optimism. These are not small things when you’re spending a week somewhere.
On the positive side — look for towel heaters. Many European accommodations have them, and beyond their obvious purpose, a good towel heater doubles beautifully as a clothes dryer. When you’re moving between destinations with a carry-on, that’s a genuinely useful feature.
The Wrap
The bathroom is where you start and end every day of your trip. It matters more than the listing wants you to think it does.
Look at the pictures. Ask for them when they’re missing. And when the host seems strangely reluctant to show you — trust that instinct completely.
Journey Moore Often, because the best trips come from knowing exactly what you’re walking into — bathroom included.
Add comment