I was in Rome this summer and fell in love with the thin cotton towels my hotel used. I read somewhere that these kinds of towels can be bought in Paris. I will be in Paris in two weeks and hope to buy some. Does anyone know where I can find them? Hopefully, not too expensive. Thanks.

Make that "thin Italian Type Towels".

If you mean the sort with a waffle weave, Bon Marche has nice ones -- and robes to match. I assume the other department stores do as well. My wife loves these; I find them excessively exfoliating: i.e., scratchy. But they are better than those plush towels that used to be popular here in the US, the kind that felt like velvet on one side but didn't get you dry!

Ackislander: Thanks for the reply. I will look at Bon Marche. I was actually thinking of something thinner than waffle. Something more like a cotton dish towel.

Charlieg,

I hate to tell you this, but those thin Italian towels are meant most frequently for, um, post-bidet use.

Sometimes they are also used as hand towels, but the intended use is generally quite clearly indicated by where the towel is placed.

I was just in the dime store where I live yesterday (in the US), and they had lots of cheap cotton dish towels for $1. They were made in India. Try a dollar store for cheap cotton towels.

Eloise: Thanks for the reply. The towels that I am talking about are most certainly for the bath. They come in 3 or 4 different sizes (from bath sheet to hand towel). They are great - more absorbent (IMHO) than terry-cloth towels. I have found them on the internet, but they are quite expensive.

Charlieg: Sorry, my mistake!

But where did you find them on the Internet? My guess is that they are by Frette's commercial division, whose products are not available online or to consumers, but only to the hospitality industry through sales agents.

No, Charlieg is right-there are those small cotton cloths placed by the bidet, but in many Italian hotels (and also some Parisian) you will have the equivalent of a "bath cloth"-as I call them-however, most Americans seem to dislike these, asking why these hotels can't "get "regular" towels-I've seen many complaints about them. I happen to like them too- a couple of hotels I recently stayed in in Trieste and Naples had this type-but it does seem to me that Italian hotels are opting more and more for the terrycloth towels rather than the former.

I think you could find them in Paris-in fact, you should see if your hotel has them in the room, and then ask where you might find the same-but I would check Le Printemps, Galeries Lafayette, C & A department stores-one of those should have something along the lines you seek.

Greenfeet.com has these towels.

If we are speaking of the same thing, the large bath size towels, the fabric is called Huckaback weave. I love them, too.

I'm old enough to remember when you could find them in the US without any problems