staying in several different gites in June around Sarlat - should I rent their linens or does anyone have any cunning ways around it? Buy em cheap at L'Eclerc? Bring 'em? Send some before we arrive? My husband thinks renting will save the hassle but it adds up! Oh, if the dollar was just *plus fort* right now!!!

Are you planning to wash the linens if you bring your own? That can "add up" also and in more ways than one.

sheesh - how much are they charging?? I doubt you can buy any (or even ship them over) for anywhere near the amount the landlord wants.

Doesn't someone like Rick Steve's or Magallen offer a travel sheet? I think I've seen them and haven't thought too much about them b/c they make them for people who might sleep in less than clean accomadations. They fold up really small. They could be silk??

L84SKY: - we aren't talking about one little sheet. When you rent linens they are talking about bed linens, towels, kitchen linens and everything. One little silk sheet - no prob. But for a houseful of linens, if they aren't provided, renting from the landlord is the best option.

As I suspected. Thanks. I agree it will probably be best to rent. I might then consider starting a linen rental business in France! lol

You won't find linens of any kind cheap at LeClerc or anywhere else in the Dordogne. Even the poor-quality ones at the outlet stores around Sarlat are expensive.

And bringing them is a total PITA, IMO.

I charge my renters for linens, too. Why? The cost of having them taken to the laundromat, cleaned, folded, and returned to my house is significant. Linen cleaning for a house full of renters can easily cost me $150.00.

St Cirq, please excuse a nosy question, but your post here prompts me to ask: are you by any chance proprietor of a house midway between Le Bugue and Les Eyzies? If so, I rented it once, and it was wonderful! (Among many pleasant memories: visiting the cave next door to admire the prehistoric paintings!)

We've rented well over 25 different gites. So far, we have akways rented linens. Like janisj said, you are also renting bath towells, kitchen towells, etc. One place charged $70 for linens (for some gites, linens are included). If we return to that gite for a third time, we'll probably buy them, bring the bed sheets home, & toss the towells (or leave them for the next guests). Last year, we did not like the the bed linens in one gite, so we went to Leclerc & bought our own. Like StCirq said, they are a PITA to lug & take home. Fortunately, it was our final gite before flying home so we didn't have to lug them anyplace else.

We have always had to wash our own sheets & towells at the Gite (we stay multiple weeks). You don't have to wash them before you leave.

Stu Dudley

The Gite we are renting wants to charge us 40Euros for one set of sheets, hand towel and dish cloth, and 2 bath towels. That's approx 60CAD. I plan to bring some old towels and sheets that I don't mind throwing away after our stay. We have a washing machine and would likely have to do a wash whether we rent them or bring them.

I might change my mind once I start packing but I don't think they'll take up that much room.

Well that is a lot if that's all you are getting. I have usually paid £10-£20 or €30-€40 for everything. But it was for lots of towels, sheets, duvets/covers, kitchen linen and so on. Much more than would ever fit in a suitcase.

Hi DLT, just a thought. Perhaps if you have some thrift shops in your area you could find various linens. Then you could just leave them in France when you are ready to fly home.
I "think" the beds in France have different measurements then the beds in the US so if you do bring bedlinens you might want to bring a flat sheet versus a fitted sheet. But the France experts here can sure address that question. Have a wonderful time..it sounds delightful.

Not to respond to the question but rather to the expectation that a client would have to rent linens or buy them. Nickel and diming on the part of the proprietor as far as I am concerned.
Charge a reasonable price for your place - jack it up to include laundering the sheets and towels if necessary - but don't rent an accomodation and expect that a traveller is going to arrive with sheets of the correct size and number in their suitcase.
DLT - you should not have to worry about the linens before you go on holiday. Unreal.
The gite I rented provides them:
www.yourfriendsinfrance.org

Well, I agree with St. Cirq that it's not easy to buy cheap linens here. Not in the supermarket, not in thrift shops. And how much of your holiday do you want to spend trying to find something to sleep on? And dry yourself and your dishes with?

That said, it does surprise me how few houses provide linens - despite what they charge. We do, because I would rather pay an all-inclusive rent than be nickel and dimed for extras and I figure that the people we deal with feel the same. It also helps that our houses have washers and dryers so that we don't have to send linens out.

But if yours doesn't, I don't think you have any choice but to pay up and as your husband says, at least it will save the hassle.

It's a French thing. Lots of French people holiday in France and they take their own linen.

If you look on gites de France or Bertrands Vacances , you'll see linen as an optional extra.

If you look on French Connection or Chez Nous, which very much cater to the English market, the expectation is different. So, it's not nickel and diming, it's just a cultural differnce

Towels and sheets take up a HUGE percentage of room in a suitcase, unless you are taking several and they are quite large.

Try it, take a normal 24" roller and put 2 towels, 2 sheets, 2 pillow caes, etc. into it... it will be more than 1/2 full.

I would simply think of the linen fee as part of your rental cost.

suze - I agree with you and it should be part of the rental price

BTW - In looking for next year's gite, I found the following statement on a place that Anselm recommended:

"We do not collect a damage deposit. Should you break something (!!) simply try to replace it, or let us know. We will find a happy solution together."

...good business IMO

Like I've already stated, we've rented over 25 different gites, and we're staying at 2 new ones this year - plus an old favorite.

About 80 to 90% of the gites we've stayed in DO NOT provide free linens. Every Gite we've rented is through Gites-de-France.fr. I believe Carlux's gite is not marketed through Gites de France. It's my observation that Gites de France weekly rental rates are quite a bit lower than other comparible properties that I've seen advertised on the internet - but since we've never rented any of these "other" properties, I could be wrong.

I'm guessing that about 95% of the people renting from Gites de France are Europeans. We have encountered zero Americans staying at adjacent Gites to ours. When "chatting" to proprietors, they indicate that very few Americans rent their Gites - compared to European renters.

Now, if I owned a Gite I rented through gites-de-France, and 95% of my customers were Europeans who could easily bring sheets & towells from home, I would certainly charge them less money than I would charge someone wanting me to provide them with sheets & towels.

Nobody has mentioned cleaning the Gite before departure - same thing there. Only about 10% of the Gites we have stayed in provide free cleaning. About 70% will clean the gite for you if you pay them (about 30-50E), and the remaining 20% MUST be cleaned by the renter. Therefore, 90% can be cleaned by the renter if they choose to do that. If I'm a budget traveler, I would clean the Gite myself and save the 30-50E. Also, if I'm a budget traveler, I would assume that the price of "free" cleaning was built into the rental rate, and I might be able to find a comparable Gite for less money if I cleaned it myself.

Many times, the gites we've rented were very easy to clean and we've chosen to clean them ourselves and spend the $ saved on a nice dinner. Other times when there were lots of nooks & crannies to clean, multiple floors, or we don't have time to clean because of an early flight - we've paid to have it cleaned by someone else.

Remember, the Gites-de-France program with over 60,000 gites that can be rented, WAS DESIGNED PRIMARILY FOR EUROPEANS. European countries like to provide vacation opportunities for everyone. I think it's a good thing where proprietors can offer something where renters can save 100E by bringing their own linens from home & cleaning the place themselves. Unfortunately for Americans like us, it's difficult to do.

Stu Dudley

I can't imaging my guests arriving with their linens and leaving after having done the cleaning. French or not. And I'm glad I decided that from the beginning because 80% of my guests are not French!

Otherwise I know I will have to bring my own linens to most rentals in France and do the cleaning, like I did in Bandol last summer.

Please remember that bed sizes in the US are different than those in France, so your US sheets might not fit. I would just pay the linen fee. If you are going to bring linens with you, bring flat sheets.

I think $150 to clean linens from your house, StCirq, is, well, a little high even with French laundromat prices. If you are dry cleaning anything, perhaps long run it would be cheaper to buy new things that you could just wash and dry without paying for ironing, etc. French people often have easy care linens in their vacation homes for "easy care" reasons while they still use old fashioned linens at home.

When I home exchange, the houses often have washers and no dryers. You are expected to clean the house to the same condition it was when you arrived. However, when I am leaving at 5:00am to catch a plane, the sheets do not get done. In that case I generally strip the bed. By the way, I always leave the house just as I found it with that one exception. Most of my exchangers in my house (but not all) have done the same. I had one set of sloppy French people and another of sloppy Germans. Having to do some cleaning occasionally when I get home is not something I like to do, but it is one of the realities of home exchanging. Most of the time, however, the house is just as I left it with unusual food items left in the fridge.