Public Changing Tables

I very rarely change Anna's diaper anywhere but at home (a few times in the car here and there) so I haven't experienced this too often, but when we were traveling this weekend I was really frustrated by two lack-of-changing-table incidents.

The first was on the airplane: I'd really like to know why there isn't a changing table on a plane that is taking hundreds of passengers on a four-hour flight. I would understand a shorter flight, but Anna truly needed her diaper changed on the flight out to San Francisco. The flight attendant suggested I could lay a blanket down over the toilet seat (and they'd throw out the blanket) to change Anna. First of all, I brought my own changing pad; and second the toilet seat is not a flat surface to lay your child down on to change her diaper. So, I sent Craig to the back and I changed her diaper on the seats (on my changing pad, of course). Thankfully it was only wet and not dirty otherwise I would have felt a little bad for our neighbors. [Obviously the solution to this particular problem would have been to change the diaper just before we boarded, but that wouldn't have solved a dirty-diaper problem, if we had had one in-flight--not sure what we would have done then!]

The second was in some public bathrooms at Fisherman's Wharf: a family tourist trap. This also did not add up--it seemed to be a relatively new building, so I can't figure out why they didn't install a simple changing table. I ended up having to lay the changing pad on the driest part of the floor (near the entrance) that I could find. (Again, she had a really wet diaper and we couldn't make her wait to change it.)