Asking To Use The Facilities

 
English people can be socially awkward at the best of times but even worse when we are in a strange place and all those glasses of water are having an effect and there is no obvious doors with the tell-tale pictures on them.
It is bad enough that you now have to announce where you need to go to a complete stranger by asking but what is the correct way to ask?
I always discreetly ask for directions to the ladies but you could ask the way to the Bathroom, the WC, Lavatory, Bog, Crapper, Loo, the John, Privy, Khazi, Latrine, Dunny or the most politest way, to powder your nose so what is the proper way to announce that you are looking for somewhere to pee because I know at some point someone is going to answer with: 'A Ladies What?' and its back to square One.
Apparently the most proper and politest way in British English to let people know you’re looking for a toilet is to ask 'Where’s The Bathroom?' because that is not specifically saying what you are going to do once you get there as you may be wanting to check your hair or wash your hands for all they know.
According to Lexicographers, there isn’t a proper name for the smallest room in the house but a Lavatory is the French word for somewhere where you wash, a toilet is a lady's dressing table and Loo is from the French word for water but we have never had a single, universally accepted term to describe the place where we go to answer the call of nature.
This is quite strange given that every single one of us goes there on average 2,500 times a year according to someone who been paid to has count these things but not sure what some people do when they get there because last year 476 people were somehow injured while using the facilities.