Last weekend I stayed in a tiny old hotel in Saint-Cyprien, a quiet coastal town in France.
The elevator could barely fit one person, the wooden floors complained with every step, and the towels were so thin you could practically read a newspaper through them.
But I loved it. Old hotels have this honest, unpolished charm.
What I didn’t expect was that the most memorable thing wouldn’t be the sea view, or the creaky stairs… but a strange object screwed into the bathroom wall.
Above the sink, jutting out from the tiles, was a metal arm holding a smooth, pale, egg-shaped block. No brand name, no label. Just this odd oval lump on a rod.
I poked it. Turned it. Sniffed it. Nothing. No perfume, no “fresh linen” scent, no hint it was even soap.
There was a bottle of liquid hand soap on the sink, so at first I assumed this thing was decorative. Some quirky relic the owner never bothered to remove.
Then it clicked: this wasn’t decor. This was a tool.
I had just met a wall-mounted rotating soap holder – and I had no idea they existed.
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