Toilets, tap water and what a cafe will do for you

There is a short answer about small practicalities and a useful one, and they are not the same. What follows is the useful one.

The coffee-for-toilet arrangement

Café toilets are private facilities for customers, and the informal exchange is that you buy something. A small espresso at the counter is the cheapest transaction available and settles it entirely. Asking to use a toilet without buying anything is sometimes granted and is a favour rather than a right.

This is the working system in most of southern Europe and it is neither hostile nor complicated.

Standards vary widely

Toilets in older cafés can be small, up or down a flight of stairs, and occasionally in poor condition. Larger modern cafés, department stores, museums and transport interchanges are the reliable options.

Accessible facilities are inconsistent in older buildings and cannot be assumed. Carrying tissues is a small habit that solves an occasional problem.

Tap water and fountains

Tap water in the city is safe and is drunk by residents, whatever taste preferences people have about it. Restaurants will serve tap water if asked, though bottled is what is offered by default. Public drinking fountains exist in parks and some squares but are not dense enough to rely on.

For most people, a refillable bottle removes both the cost and the plastic from a day of walking.

Ordering water in a restaurant

Bottled water arrives by default and is charged, and there is a choice between still and sparkling. Asking for tap water is understood and generally provided without fuss, though it is less common locally. Water is not automatically brought to the table before you order in most places.

In summer, ordering it early is a good habit for reasons that have nothing to do with etiquette.

Wi-fi, sockets and phones

Wi-fi is common in newer cafés and inconsistent in traditional ones, and asking is normal where it exists. Power sockets are scarce in older rooms and were installed for fridges rather than phones.

Put simply, charging a phone at a café socket is generally tolerated when you ask first and unwelcome when you do not. Public networks are not secure, so anything sensitive should wait.

Bags, coats and small things

There are no cloakrooms in ordinary cafés, and bags stay with you. Crowded transport and crowded terraces are where opportunistic theft happens, so bags stay in front.

In practice, left luggage exists at transport interchanges and at commercial storage points around the centre. Nothing here is unusual for a European capital; it is simply the ordinary set of small logistics.

The pharmacy is the other place that helps

Pharmacies here absorb a great deal that would go to a doctor elsewhere, and the pharmacist will advise on a minor problem, dress a small wound, or tell you plainly that this one needs a clinic. They are marked by a green cross and work a rota, so one in each area stays open overnight and the address of the duty pharmacy is posted on the door of every closed one. Plenty of medicines sold off the shelf in other countries sit behind the counter here, so you ask rather than browse, and the brand names on the box will not be the ones you grew up with.

For anything beyond the obviously minor you will be sent onward to a qualified professional, and that referral is worth taking rather than negotiating over the counter.

The takeaway

Buy the small coffee, carry a refillable bottle, and ask before you plug anything in.

Pick the one that costs you least, and let the rest wait.