LizTD

What is the best packable travel towel for a beach trip to the mediterranean where some hotels won't be lux enough to supply them? Tips on towels to avoid also welcome. (i tired to search this forums first but it only generated ads.)

Odin

Turkish cotton hammam towels.

NewbE

I would just buy one when you get there. Then you can either bring it home with you as a keepsake or just leave it behind.

kja

If you are looking for a towel you can use to lie on, I’m not sure a travel towel would work – they are extremely thin. If what you want is a super-absorbant towel that weighs next to nothing just to dry off or something like that, check REI or similar retailer.

crellston

Travel towels are a waste of packing space ime. My wife had one made out of some synthetic material. Yes it packed realtively small, but is was hopeless at absorbing anything.

I take a large cotton red and white Cambodian "krama” about 6 feet by 2.5ft is double as a sarong, towel, scarf. Possibly the most useful item I keep in my bag!

Cambodia is a long way to go to pick one up though, but there are often similar items availed in local markets in many places. The beauty of them is the more it is used and washed the softer and more absorbent it becomes. It really does improve with age.

I also used to have a large Arab keffiyeh form travel in the Middle East years ago which performed similar tasks and seem to be available online. Although be aware that they can have political/ military significance in Arab countries - partly how I lost mine!!

LizTD

Thanks for the feedback. I was thinking of something to dry myself with more than to sit on. But of course I never thought of just buying a towel. Brilliant! And I do have a swim sarong that can double as a towel so even if we don't buy towels I will be covered - excuse the pun - even if my loved ones are not!!

Odin

I always wash new towels a couple of times before use otherwise they are not absorbent, something I would not be bothered to do on vacation. The cheap ones they sell at beach resorts around the Med will need washing, not only to improve absorbency but many are highly coloured and the colour runs when washed.

If you want something very lightweight, absorbent, dries quickly and takes up very little room in your suitcase, I recommend the hammam towels. Not sure where you can buy them in the US but found these.

http://turkishtowelstore.com/pestemal/cotton-pestemal

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_s...=1L5XIEJ0L1PGX

They also double as sarongs, table cloths etc.

NewbE

I agree that a Turkish towel would be perfect, if there's room in the suitcase.

suze

I would buy a thin, cheap towel after I arrived.

fuzzbucket

If you can find a "fouta" - about a meter and a half's worth of medium weight cotton - it folds up to the size of a t-shirt and dries almost immediately. About 10 € in markets.

LSky

Wow Odin! What a great towel! Now, to decide the color.


I don't know if I would take it on vacation. There are cotton towels I bought on a end of season sale at Target. Not attractive but functional.

(great gift for a friend with a pool

Jo89

I agree, travel towels is a waste and no use. You better buy a cheap cotton towel for beach and rough use.

mlgb

I need to hear that story crellston. I don't lie out anymore but in the olden days I would use an old twin sheet. My travel towel is one of those kitchen sized microfiber towels, they absorb a lot of water and dry quickly.

kja

I treasure my travel towel! Bath-towel sized, it is SUPER lightweight, SUPER exhorbant and dries quickly. I use it to help dry my hand wash every night, and to pack anything that isn't fully dry when I'm ready to leave. I do NOT use it for lying on a beach....

DebitNM

We use these. Lightweight when dry, super absorbent. In auto cleaners dept of Walmart, Target etc.Great for snorkel trips.


https://www.walmart.com/ip/The-Absor...&wl13=&veh=sem

eliztravels2

My well-traveled daughter once entertained herself on a long plane ride by listing all the various uses for a Turkish towel. I don’t recall how many she came up with but it was more than a dozen I’m sure. She gave me one and it is now on my ‘must pack' list regardless of my destination.

LizTD

Well, back from Greece and I decided to buy towels ahead of time because I wanted something already washed (and while buying after one arrives is a great idea in theory, if you are not so keen on using an unwashed towel, hard to do). After reading about bacteria in microfiber towels and upon the suggestion of Odin, I found some great Turkish towels on Amazon(which we called Grecian towels to avoid the culture clash). I am a penny pincher and the ones I found were $60 for 6 towels (they now are up to around $80). Even at $80, well worth it for 6 towels at that. They washed well, worked well, are soft and dried quickly. Here is the link:
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/...00?ie=UTF8&psc
If the link does not work and any other Fodorites are interested, I'll send the specs. Interestingly, very similar towels were sold at many sidewalk shops in Greece but for more than roughly $10 a towel I paid. So I guess that they are Turkish towels only if you are in Turkey (or outside Greece).

kja

Thanks for reporting back!

LizTD

And back to around $10 per towel today. I feel like Amazon is like Uber or the stock market. Pricing is very variable. But value is relative, isn't it?

MoBro

There are swimmers' towels, like chamois, that we have liked.
They are packaged like the one that DebitNM linked to. Easy to travel with.