Game of Thrones:

One man's search for Atlanta's finest bathroom.

A Song of Water and Porcelain

Here's a fun fact: you'll spend about 1.5 years of your life in the restroom.

That is, if you even have one. The numbers provided by The World Toilet Organization (which is an actual thing) suggest that lack of access to plumbing - and therefore toilets - is a serious global issue. Worldwide, more people have access to cell phones than toilets.

Meanwhile, locally, we don't face the "cell phone or toilet" paradox. This is because we are all considered rich (in global terms); even our $30,000 per year households are statistically among the global one percent.

Despite these advantages, in a sprawling metropolis like Atlanta it's easy to find ourselves doing the bouncy dance in unfit surroundings, or to settle for less than our one-percent (and beyond!) lifestyle demands.

After all, there are only two rules of power and wealth:

The first rule? Only the finest restrooms.

I went looking for the guide to Atlanta's finest bathrooms. Weirdly, I found nothing.

This is my journey.

These are my findings:

First Class All the Way: The Luxury Hotels.

One by one I visited the marble palaces of the city, often for hours on end.

During these visits, I discovered a distinct advantage to the hotel restroom: bellhops. Try this - once you are actually settled into the restroom, call the front desk from your cellphone and request both a newspaper and a glass of fine red wine.

Soon, the bellhop will enter timidly with the paper, and the wine. Use a strong tone of voice in demanding they place your order at the foot of the stall. Test the wine, and only accept the glass should it meet your expectations. Finally, you should abruptly command the bellhop to leave at once.

The feeling of adrenaline you'll get as he scurries fearfully off? That's real power.

In Atlanta, strong preference is given to the The Four Seasons, Ritz-Carlton, the W Hotel midtown and Fox Theatre bathrooms. Although the Fox isn't a hotel, its old school decor closely outclasses almost every traditional accommodation I visited. You can certainly try to sleep there as well.

My ultimate take away? The finest restrooms in all of Atlanta are at The St. Regis Hotel in Buckhead.

The grand lobby bathroom sits outside the hotel ballroom and has the characteristics to match its position. One can sit in its opulent marble halls and imagine Cinderella touching up her eyeliner mid-ball.

The Restaurant Bathroom Prediction Formula:

[total references to (seasonal+fresh+sustainable+springer mountain) ] x Yelp Stars / 100

Can you name this Midtown restaurant by its lighting? Just kidding, it's all of them.

Can you name this Midtown restaurant by its lighting? Just kidding, it's all of them.

The Restaurants: The Yelp-assisted search

The locally-sourced and sustainably-farmed darlings of Yelp offered me relief from the "trespassing"-obsessed security heads at the local hotels.

Statement-making bathroom design seems like a pre-launch requirement at every Atlanta hot spot du jour (another being a lifetime supply of Edison Bulbs). Subtle differences between the hotel and restaurant cultures: several of the dining staff seemed downright insulted at my cell phone requests for wine and newspaper.

Of note:

Atlanta's most celebrated sushi makers, the team at Umi has also brought back from the future the toilet mankind deserves.

Meanwhile, there is a mirrorless confusion portal at the sinks of the Painted Pin, creating a vortex of amusement, side glances and exaggerated soap usage.

You can avoid awkward hand washes entirely at The Optimist, where individually numbered doors house a single-serving bathroom. It's floor to ceiling relief from the pressures of society. In a bathroom like this, you'll leave just a bit more...optimistic.

Tucked away among the reclaimed wood countertops and Restoration Hardware metals of Holeman & Finch sits a nice little co-ed bathroom surprise. Though small, the room is elegant and sophisticated, and the time-worn sliding barn doors help minimize the crowded nature of the narrow hall.

A few miles and a trans-pacific spiritual journey away, the ambient peace of the Far East is perfected in the mahogany and river stone appointments of Nan. With little extras (like lotus petals and single-use cotton towels) the space gives more without intruding. Nan accents the floor to ceiling privacy rooms with the quiet wisdom of a master. You could be negotiating the terms of a divorce over dinner and still enjoy your time in this zen garden.

Master the Masses: Win at malls and work.

In places where thousand of people go each day, I encountered strife. In fact, I am ashamed to admit that there are times I was forced to explore without the aid of newspaper or Napa cabernet.

There simply wasn't an attendant on call, and most of my desperate and increasingly guttural cries were met with confusion or deep and unending stranger-fear.

A system did emerge through the pain; a two-rule system for existing among the (yuck) global two percent.

Learn the outliers and seek higher financial ground.

Do not use food court restrooms. Instead, go with the most expensive on-site department store. The restrooms of Nordstrom at Lenox Square deliver. The Phipps Plaza restrooms are exactly as lovely as you'd expect. All of them.

The perfection of the old fashioned sitting room at Von Maur in North Point Mall (pictured) is the finest in its class. You'll find no reason to leave, unless you are wilting in the OTP of it all.

Elsewhere in the city's most populace spaces, even more dutiful searching was required. There are Atlantic Station branded restrooms below deck, near the movie theater that far surpass the movie theater's own selection. Use them before you ascend from the parking caverns.

The bathrooms on the upper floors at the High Museum are better than those below or in surrounding buildings. If downtown, the toilets at the Hard Rock Cafe are a great choice.

Solutions
for work and travel.

At Work

For those in high-density urban settings like offices or college campuses, the preferred strategy is to identify a repeatable pattern of obscured bathroom movement.

Take the stairs from your office on the eighth floor to the restroom on the ninth. Odds are, you're the only one using a multi-floor operation. Even if you are discovered, it will probably be by a peer worth trusting. Who else would notice?

When in search of even greater anonymity, head to the buildings highest floors where floor to ceiling stalls are more likely, or to the main lobby for strength in numbers.

Travel

As a traveler's last resort, there are a handful of gas stations worthy of emergency use. QuikTrip, RaceTrac and most long-haul truck stop gas stations offer amenities we can live with.

In Final Analysis

As is so often the case in life, our journey has brought us back to the very place we began; reflecting on the city, and her comfort stations.

Was it a necessary journey? No.

But I think we've learned something. Maybe we even grew just a little bit.

And so we close the chapter on the first rule of global wealth - that first, fateful bathroom bond of excellence that binds us together as Atlantans.

As with any chapter end, we can turn the page and find the beginning of the next chapter.

Chapter Two?
Give back; The second rule for the fortunate few.

Lend a helping hand in the fight against the unsanitary conditions that literally cost children their lives. Then, stroll into the St. Regis and have a glass of Stag's Leap to you as you sit atop your porcelain throne, texting the concierge in demand of more cheese.

Cheat Sheet (for the seriously committed):

Hotels and Luxury:
St. Regis, The Four Seasons, Ritz-Carlton, W Hotel midtown and Fox Theatre

Restaurants:
Umi, Painted Pin, The Optimist, Holeman & Finch, Nan

Crowded Places:
All of Phipps Plaza, Nordstrom at Lenox Square, Von Maur at North Point Mall, the Atlantic Station secret bathroom, Hard Rock Cafe, High Museum upstairs.

Work and Travel:
At the office it's all about strategy.
On the road, it's QuikTrip and RaceTrac, or Pilot stations if out of town.