A few months back I gave my husband a travel guide called 1,000 Places to See Before You Die.

It's a great book, with one deficiency: It says nothing about bathrooms.

Unless your idea of bathroom nirvana is a small, dark hut built over a hole in the ground, it's fair to say that some of the world's best places have some of the worst facilities. I learned this first-hand during an extended stay in Crete. You would never suspect that, at one time, Crete had the best bathrooms around.

Would it be so hard to publish a companion book called 1,000 Places to Go Before You Die, focusing on the most excellent public restrooms around the globe?

Now that I think of it, yes.

The topic is taboo, and has been for ages.

Think of all the euphemisms we use when we're talking toilet. We say "bathroom" or "restroom," though we are usually neither bathing nor resting when we're in there. Medieval monks were equally coy, calling the room "the necessarium."

Even the word "lavatory" comes from a Latin word that means "to wash." While it's always a good idea to wash up after visiting, say, an airplane lavatory, everyone knows that's not really why people form lines outside those tiny cabins in the sky.

It gets even wackier at sea. Sailors use the phrase "poop deck" without blushing. But that's because they're not using it for the advertised activity. The "poop" comes from the Latin word "puppis," which means stern.

For landlubbers, the stern is the rear end of the boat--something that does nothing to relieve the confusion about the purpose of the poop deck. Meanwhile, the "head" is where you go to the bathroom, possibly because the head of the boat is the safer place to seek such relief, due to the direction wind blows.

And frankly, even the word "toilet" is a euphemism. It comes from the French word "toilette," which meant "bag for clothing." As if!

All this aside, there is good reason for us all to be less bashful and more worshipful when it comes to the toilet. We may live in an age of computerized potties that can clean themselves, but this might not always be the case. Once upon a time, Crete was a world leader in lavatories. Now, it's just best to say they still produce great olives, yogurt, and honey, and leave it at that. 

Maybe had the Cretans kept a better handle on their history, their contribution to the world wouldn't have been lost in the sewers of time.