RS Tours and Laundry?

Convenience of doing laundry will vary by tour. If your tour includes parts of Europe where drop-off or self-service laundromats are common, you'll have lots of flexibility to do laundry. For example, some self-service laundromats will dry and fold your laundry for a small additional fee, so there's very little lost time. On tours where laundromats aren't common, there are usually a couple of arranged opportunities for laundry during the tour.

Jerry, As Frank mentioned, the laundry facilities will vary by tour and by city. There won't be laundry facilities in every place you visit so you'll need to be prepared to go for a few days without doing laundry. You may have to wash a few things in the Hotel room sink in the interim. I just completed the 11-day Holland & Belgium tour, and only ONE of the Hotels provided a Washer and Dryer. Pay laundromats were available at a couple of the other locations. The Guide will have information on locations where you'll be able to do laundry. Happy travels!

Since I only take enough clother for one week I plan in advance where I will be doing my laundry. I have yet to see a washer/dryer in any of the hotels on tours with RS and Tauck. Since I carry my RS travel books I use his recommendations on laundry facilities and all the places have been great. In Switzerland they do you laundry for you. In Italy,France,and Amsterdam we did our own laundry.

Jerry - Some of the hotels on the tours do have laundry service. If not, there are usually places listed in the guidebooks or you can get a referral from your hotels or guide. Sometimes the laundry will deliver your clothing back to your hotel or even pick up and delivery. We haven't had any problems recently finding places to have laundry done in Central Europe, Turkey, Italy, Greece, etc... Sometimes you pay a premium, but to me it's worth it. We usually bring some Woolite packets and a small bottle of Fabreeze to tide us over until we can get laundry done. I just don't like doing heavy duty handwashing anymore...

If you check the RS guidebooks he often mentions the locations of the laundry mats. I travelled from Venice, Florence, Siena and the Cinque Terre this past summer and had a laundry within a short walk of every one of my hotels.

I have been on two RS tours and there were limited number of hotels that actually had "do it yourself" laundry facilities. And you need to remember that there are 24-28 other members of that tour group that are competing with you for laundry time. The other issue that I recall is that dryers at these locations do not seem to have much heat so items did not dry that well. My wife and I would always hand wash some items in the sink of our hotel room when we first arrived to give them time to hang dry. I do have some fond memories related to doing laundry at a laundromat across the road from our hotel in Sarlat and also at the agriturismo we stayed at in Tuscany.

We really like that RS Guidebooks will mention where a laundry facility is located. One thing to beware of is unusual closing times-like two hours during lunch. We had the experience in Madrid where the manager of laundramat decided to take a three hour lunch. We had two loads of clothes to pick up and a train to catch-a stressful situation but it worked out fine-try to plan ahead. Hotels are way too pricey for our wallets.

And then there are those of us who go to Europe every summer for a month with one 21" suitcase with three sets of clothes and do washing every third night in our room sink and hang stuff up to dry in the shower or tub. Sure saves the cost of laundry service.