Pay toilets for travelers are nothing new. In our recent wanderings in Europe, we had to pay to use johns in London’s Paddington Station, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Kremlin in Moscow and the Coliseum in Rome.

We were only mildly annoyed when we had to shell out some lira to use the tourists’ bathroom at the Vatican. No, we didn’t make that angry two-word statement where one of the words is holy. In fact, in many of the tourist trap cities throughout the world, managing pay toilets is a family business, passed on from generation to generation.

However, when we joked about pay toilets on airplanes in a www.travel55plus.com article just a week or so ago, we thought it was worth a chuckle. Nah, airlines would never ... er ... stoop to that. However, Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary emphasized again the other day that his bare-bones airline will soon charge passengers a Brit pound $1.65US) to go potty on its flights.

When questioned about flying loos by laughing reporters, O’Leary resembled his Chicago ancestor and had a cow. He was apparently angry because Ryanair, for years as profitable as fellow low-cost airline, Southwest, has been losing money since the huge spike in fuel prices hit last year.