We're going to Italy for a month, and are trying to pack reasonably light. This raises the issue of how to get clothes laundered so that we have enough clothes to span different occasions as well as a fairly wide variance in weather.
Questions:
1] Is hotel laundry service [four star hotels in Rome, Venice, Florence] very expensive....estimated cost?

2] Are there laundromats, or full service laundries located in these city centers?

We found laundry service in Italy's 3* hotels to be much less expensive than that in Paris and other parts of France. Can't tell you about 4* hotels, sorry.

You are much more likely to find a laundry where you can leave your stuff for the day and they charge you by the kilo for laundering, drying, and folding (make sure they do the last part), than to find a self-service laundry, at least in Rome.

Average price in hotels seems to be about 3 euro for a pair of socks and 4 or 5 euro per pair of underwear. OK, for two of us, two weeks worth of socks and underwear ALONE comes to about $250. I don't think so!!

There is a wonderful self-serve laundromat in Venice, not far from the train station, right by the Ponte Guglie, which even has an internet cafe right next door.

I used laundry facilities in Florence and Venice. They were easy to use and one had internet service so I could check email while my clothes tumbled. These facilities were about as expensive as I remember paying in the states.

Due to poor planning, and a very tight schedule, we recently sent out items ( 2 days worth of clothing for 4 people) from a 4-star hotel in Italy. The bill was nearly as much as a 1-night stay!

Note to self, and you- look for laundromats whenever possible!!

I go to Italy for 1 month plus and never have trouble bringing limited clothing - I pack light! There are a couple options: usually most hotels have a laundry service in that they have to wash/dry all their bathroom towels, etc. If you ask the front desk, they might be willing to do your laundry for a small charge. They have done that for me on occasion. Additionally, there are laundromats around in Rome that run all day/late at night and you could take a couple loads over during the day, eat lunch at a cafe while they are washing, then retrieve them after. (For example, we found a couple in the Vatican neighborhood with trattorias across the street so it was very convenient). Likewise, there are dry cleaners throughout the large city centers. Lastly, if you bring a small plastic baggy of detergent, you can soak/wash your own small items in the bathroom sink or bathtub and then rinse and let them air dry during the day while you are out and about sight-seeing. I usually wash socks, undergarments, etc like this since smaller items.

You will certainly find self-service laundry in Rome.

Rex, type <laundry> (without <&gt into the search box at the top of the page, highlight Italy in the box to the right, then press "Find." Many posts will appear from the archives on the left hand side of your screen. Browse through them to find a lot of info about laundry in Italy.

Now where did that evil looking little guy come from? The left and right arrows must be a Smiley.


Alternatively, Rex, you can click on your username, Rexmor, in red, to bring up the responses from your original post asking the same question on 28 April 04.

Gaeta, I've been to Rome four times now, and I have yet to see an actual self-service laundry. There may be one, but twice we spent hours and hours on our walks specifically looking for one. A couple of times we've found one that sort of looked like it could be self-service, but all machines were in use and clothes piled up to be put in. Those places are where you pretty much have to pay the woman to do it in the machines and pay her by the load or by the kilo. We've asked at hotels and at a tourist information office and never found one that way either. So wherever they are, they certainly are hard to find. I was thrilled that my apartment at Palazzo Olivia had its own washer, even though there was no dryer -- just a drying rack and a big floor fan.

Here's one in central Rome (at least the web page says it is):

http://www.holidayinrome.com/service...splashnet.html

To Patrick:

I'm sorry if when you came to Rome you found people unable to advise you about this service.I do work in a hotel, I've been doing this job since 2000, and I've always sent my guests on Self-service laundromat, when they needed it. There's one at two blocks distance from the place I'm writimg to you now. It is possible, very often, to find self-service laundromat & internet point on the same place.

Regards.

Sorry for posting twice on the same subject. I'd not realized that you could pull up prior posts like that! On a couple of occasions now, I've posted a question, come back later and couldn't find it, so assumed that my post didn't get "posted". I won't make that mistake again.

OndaBlu is a chain of self-service laundaries in Italy. Here's the URL for their locations. Site is in Italian, but if you go to the home page you can choose Spanish; even if you know neither of these languages, you can probably figure it out. We've used the location in Florence and in Rome and found them to to be fine as laundromats go.