Do we need to bring beach towels?

If by travel towel you mean this, https://store.ricksteves.com/shop/p/travel-towel-king-size, Its $25 and a 'regular' size towel is $20 Depending on when your trip is you can watch the RS site as there are occasional 20% off sales. ( one just ended)

Pack along a standard beach towel or the "travel towel" or buy there .

OR

Maybe take the rattiest towels you have at home and toss them when done with the beach and use the towel space as your souvenir space. Then the new towels you have to buy will be at home. Takes a little sting out of buying towels

I have no other suggestion. Maybe someone else is better at outside the box thinking

Rick's King-Size microfiber travel towel is not huge at 30" x 50" but it works, weighs 8.4 ounces, and costs $25 each. I do often travel with one, but have also recently stayed at hotels that provided beach towels. If you don't think you'd use them for other adventures later, then don't get them.

Buying cheaper terry-cloth towels locally may be more comfortable if lying on any gravel. I'd expect a resort area to offer a selection.

Does your apartment provide bath towels? They probably don't want you to bring them to the beach, but I guess that could be the back-up plan.

Ugh, the idea of taking something so big that I won't use every day kills me. I would take joe's suggestion, or buy them at the lake, keep a couple of those as souvenirs and toss the others.

They are handy for packing around breakables, though.

Yeah, don't want to spend $125 on five beach towels when we have tons here at home already. And we are unlikely to use them again, since taking the kids to Europe is not going to be an annual thing. Geez. How frustrating. Pare down our packing list and end up with this issue.

The apartment will only give us enough towels for the shower, so if we get them dirty and wet on the beach, as is likely, we won't have any for our showers. I thought about that as a backup but it's not a very good option, as you guys noted.

I guess I could pack sarongs for my stepdaughter and I, since I have a few, and then three towels for my husband and two boys. at least then we're only dealing with three beach towels. I have some cheaper, thinner ones that my son takes for beach day at school. They aren't terribly bulky.

I've seen beach towels for sale at street markets during hot weather, and utilitarian goods at street markets are usually priced decently. However, Lake Garda isn't a low-cost destination, you mught not come upon a market early in your trip, and the price times 5 might still be too high. It's a frustrating situation, but I'd certainly be looking through my closet for abandonable towels. It wouldn't be so bad if you only have to carry the extra weight on the first travel leg of your trip unless it affects your ability to do carry-on only, if that is your intention.

You can find them there for about 15 euro each. I don't know where you are staying, but if you can get a hold of a HyperCoop superstore or similar, you can find them for 10 euro.
Beach towel in Italian is TELO DA MARE (plural: Teli da mare).

However, I'll tell you my strategy on my frequent travels to Hawaii.
1. Go to my gym and borrow gym towels.
2. Put the gym towels in my bag and take home.
3. Pack gym towel in suitcase.
4. Use at beach and leave towels there (my gym won't miss them, they are cheap white ones).
The towels take room in my suitcase when I go, but once I get rid of them, that frees up some room for souvenir, or simply gives me a lighter bag on my return trip.

If you have so many extra at home, instead of stealing them from the gym and you don't mind leaving them there, you can do the same with the extra towels you have at home.

Roberto-- If you take towels from the gym and do not bring them back, that is NOT 'borrowing'

"my gym won't miss them, they are cheap white ones)" well, if they are cheap, why not pay for them.? You are just doing pick pocketing in a slightly different manner, by making all the other gym members pay for missing towels with higher fees. Shame on you

I suppose that explains why you have "frequent "trips to Hawaii. You have someone ( unknowingly) subsidizing you.

Bring some thin ones from home. You and daughter may prefer a towel instead of a sarong. They would make adequate pillows or coverups on a chilly plane ride over. When you depart, leave them at the apt. The next renter will thank you.
When we rented a home for a week in Minnesota that had two enormous butcher knives but nothing smaller, i bought four cheap paring knives at the grocery store to go w our steaks and just gifted them to the house

I always have a pareo in my bag and I use it as a beach/pool towel. Cover-up,
shawl, scarf, skirt ......... use it for lots of stuff and it is very lightweight and folds up into a plastic sandwich bag size. I bought it is Costa Rica several years ago for a couple dollars and it is perfect for traveling.
(and always reminds me of my trip to Costa Rica LOL)

Those Rick Steves microfiber towels are worth the money. I bought all 3 sizes and pack them everywhere I go, even if I don't go to the beach cause I never know if I'll get towels at my B & B or hotel. Sometimes the lodging towels are so ratty and threadbare, I can't stand to use them; other times the lodging won't change the towel for a week and it's so dirty I can't use it.

Those RS towels are magnificent, ample sized, flexible and supple yet strong and sturdy. They have such a beautiful sheen that I often parade around in them to show them off. They wick off water quickly like a chamois yet feel soft and luxurious to the touch.

I've used them to dry items I wash out in the lodging's sink. The towels wash up fast and easy with a bit of dish or laundry soap and dry fast. I just throw them over a railing or the RS clothesline. They never wear out; they dry fresh and ready to use like new.

It gets better, they pack in between the cracks and add little to no weight. You don't even know they are there. Yet they pack a lot of versatility. I get the turquoise towels and they are just beautiful. The RS towels add magic to my trip and make me happy. I think your family will love them.

Here's a 20X40" for $9.85 on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Microfiber-Rainleaf-Perfect-Sports-Travel/dp/B01K1TXDIK/ref=pd_lpo_vtph_200_lp_t_3?_encoding=UTF8&refRID=QZSMXCBMGYQDFG9RMX2Q&th=1&psc=1

They come in 2 smaller and 3 larger sizes (priced accordingly) and you could all have a different color! :O)
Good reviews, too.

Editing to add: an even bigger one (130 cm X 80 cm) for $8.99:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0168LB0V2?psc=1

How are you getting to your apartment? Could you stop at a sporting goods store on your way? One such store with reasonable prices is Decathalon. It sells 80x130cm (31x51 in) microfiber towels for €5,99 and 110x175cm (43x69 in) towels for €9,99. We bought these very towels a couple years ago and they're great. We bring them on trips (they're nice and compact for travel) and use them when we swim locally too.

https://www.decathlon.it/C-460571-teli

I was lucky enough to find towels for €3 each at the local weekly market day in Portovenere. Check for local market days and you might just get lucky!

Won't you have towels at the apartment??? Microfiber towels medium or large sized can be purchased on Amazon for about $12 and pack down to nothing....just enough to freshen up with AND use to dry moisture from washed items if bathroom is humid...

these towels can be used over and over again and brought home for gym etc...

The two I linked above are microfiber.

I wonder if you could order some from Amazon (or another site) for cheap and have them sent to your apartment in Lake Garda so you don't have to pack them? That would depend of course on the honesty of the apartment owner (or hotel, it looks like) to hold the parcel for you.

I just mention because I bought some soaps once on etsy and didn't want to pay the crazy shipping to Canada. The soaps were from California and we were going there on vacay, so I asked our airbnb lady if I could have them sent to her and we picked them up there (the shipping to Canada was more than the soaps, as opposed to a few bucks to mail within Cali).

Just a thought - I guess it would depend on the hotel/apartment. Might be worth a try...

At the same time, microfiber towels can pack down pretty small and they're very lightweight.
Shoot, if you got home and decided you didn't want all of them anymore - although one or two in the car for emergencies might be useful - you could probably cut them up and use them for lint-free cleaning! :O)

Maybe I'll buy a couple of the cheap microfiber towels on Amazon, and then bring a few older beach towels from our house. We have a pool, and the towels get raggedy after a few years, so it's definitely an option in our household.

You could buy a few small sized microfiber which work for drying off (even the washcloth sized ones will absorb a wet body's worth of water) and then try to find an inexpensive blanket once there for the 5 of you to sit on.

FYI I found full-size, albeit thin, beach towels at Wal-mart for $3 each. I bought three of those, and I have two old beach towels I'm taking. I'm fine with leaving all five of those behind in Italy, if we don't need them to wrap around souvenirs in our luggage. So I'm set and for less than $10. :)

Excellent. I still can't believe you have to take them - but you've come up with a good solution! (and anyway thin is better for packing!)

I suggest testing the Walmart towels to be sure the colors don't run (potentially ruining swimsuits or other articles in the same load of laundry.

A few years ago I bought a stack of thin, brightly colored washcloths at Walmart, thinking they'd be ideal for trips to Europe since they'd be light to pack and very hard to leave behind. But the colors ran, badly, even in plain cold water. Fortunately, I discovered the problem at home and before any of them went into the washer.

already washed them, they didn't bleed, they seem ideal for the purpose for which I bought them.