Todor, on one trip I stayed in a couple of hostels where they used a bottom sheet and a duvet cover, both freshly laundered. Each guest was responsible for putting the sheet on the bed and the duvet cover on the duvet. Other times I've stayed at hotels which used bottom sheets, duvets and duvet covers, which I presume were freshly laundered. But there were no dirty blankets to worry about. Some hotels use triple sheeting.

I don't know how you would disinfect hotel blankets and bedspreads, without actually putting them in the washing machine with bleach and then drying them on high. If you are concerned, I'd suggest looking for hotels that use duvets or triple sheeting.

Here it comes :-) Returning from the US, I spent one night in an inexpensive hotel in Würzburg. Heaven on earth! Clean sheets good breakfast a nice bathroom. Beautiful Bavaria. US motels in that price range are 100% dirty, stinking!, poorly maintained wooden shacks with roaches that offer a so called "luxury breakfast" consisting of juice, cheap jam, and some awful acidic mixture they call coffee. All this served on plastic.

Hope you're happy now, todor :-)

Todor, yes I am bothered by your comment. Do you just assume other people are not clean?

Logos999---as we would say in tennis---nice shot.

Hotel cleanliness has always been an issue for me. How do you know that the toilet has been cleaned when you check into your French/Italian hotel? You presume it was, but there is no way to really be sure.

There is currently a mega million dollar law suit pending regarding a woman who was bitten by bed bugs at a very upscale resort in the Catskills. They showed photos of red lesions which covered her entire back and arms. She photographed the nocturnal bed bugs which were still alive on the side ticking of her bed. Evidently her husband was not effected as severely. I presume these bugs are can live anywhere in the world. The defendant said she now inspects every mattress in every hotel. Not a bad idea.

Supposedly one of the most germ laden areas in a hotel room is the bed spread. We recently had a room in Radda in Chianti where they had a clean sheet on top of the blanket to keep the bed experience as sanitary as possible. I thought that was a great idea but it's very rare.

On my next trip to Syndey and New Zealand I am mulling over the idea of taking a packet of Clorox sanitary wipes to wipe down each hotel before we unpack. Am I getting too paranoid?

Claire, my father told me the exact same thing! And guess what? In my early days of traveling to exotic places (India in particular) I would get sick once in a while. I am sure luck plays into it, but in 25 years of eating street food in many, many countries, I have not had any problems from the food. When I read posts about how smoke may get into tapas at a bar in Spain and this one, about handling money and ice cream...well, I don't know what to say. Common sense and a little spirit of adventure..that's my ticket. And yes, I realize that many people have serious health issues and cannot behave as I do; I am not advocating diving into every street stall........but I also think many people worry too much!

Well I like your idea Will Travel, I can just spray the bed thoroughly with bleach and then dry it using the hotel hairdrier. One thing I worry about is whether I can sleep with all the Clorox fume. Any other ideas?

Todor, regarding your bed question, here is a long thread discussing the bed spreads, etc...

http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34438397

Sorry to hear about your US motel experience logos. I don't blame you for whining, we completely gave up staying in those cheap motels in the US. Yes, we also prefer to stay in those clean little German inns, mainly because of their clean duvets and triple sheets.

LOL Faina thanks for that hilarious thread. Fodor has been rather boring to read lately.

I'm pretty sure the Clorox fumes in the room would be more dangerous than possibly dirty bedspreads. Not to mention, the hotel might charge you if you damage it with bleach stains.

Will, this actually happened to us in a small hotel in Italy. We were ready to get into bed but found a trail of ants all over the bedsheets and hundreds more in the mattress. The sleepy receptionist claimed that there's no other room to move us to but he had a solution. Well he showed up with a bottle of bleach and preceded to spray the mattress! Needless to say, we didn't sleep that night even after we pushed the mattress out to the balcony. They didn't charge our stay for that night.

In the UK a few years ago there was a TV programme which filmed a household from a microscopic level. They trained special cameras on different parts of the house (and on the family living there) and showed the microscopic flora and fauna living absolutely everywhere. If you'd seen the tiny things that were crawling and reproducing all over the soap, you'd never wash your hands again! There are bugs and "germs" everywhere. As long as you stick to basic food/ hygiene rules like washing hands after touching raw meat or eggs, washing hands after going to the bathroom, etc., then I can't see where the harm is.
Incidentally, another nugget of info that I picked up from the TV show is that there are usually more bacteria in the average kitchen sink than on the average toilet. Nice!

I watched that too, (it was on BBC) the reason the toilet seat is so "clean" is because it's dry (most of the time), kitchens are warmer and wetter.

Without some comparative statistical illness and mortality rates between the U.S. and western Europe that can be identified as caused by unhygienic practices, I consider such worries as bordering on the hysterical. I know of people who refuse to eat pâté because of the "bad" meats that are put in it, or others who refused to eat cheese because it was a product of "spoiled" milk. I simply do not pay attention to those quirks. As for toilet seats, to (mis?)quote Abby Hoffman, you can catch an STD from them only if you dig the position.

Todor - what do you do when you are on a plane. Certainly they don't disenfect those seats. I have to say I have been tempted more than one to bring a flat sheet and throw it over the seat.

Easy... In extreme situations, you take a few pieces of toilet paper and arrange them nicely to fit the seat, put some more on important, fewer on less important spots :-) :-) It works.

Well logos, you beat me to it! That's why I carry my own roll of toilet paper when I travel. I have to figure out how you make those smiling faces.