Laundry on a Rick Steves European bus tour?

On most days of the tours you will have the afternoon free of any organized tour group activity and have the afternoon and evening to do as you please. This is when you would be able to do laundry. Some of the hotels may offer laundry services, for a fee of course. We did this on one of the tours and it worked out quite well.

Every Rick Steves tour I’ve ever been on had laundry service about 1/2 way through the trip. One trip was 2 weeks long and one was closer to 3 weeks. The hotel provided it.

If you don’t want to wash undies then don’t. If you are going to bring a bunch of undies I’d suggest travel undies like Ex Officio. (I like the sport briefs). While expensive, they are also light and compact. They last for years so are an excellent value.

If you’ve got a particular tour in mind someone here on the forum has probably been on it and can tell you where the convenient laundry spots are located. This will likely be at one of the spots where there is a 2 or 3 night stay.

if you are willing to pay for it there should be no problem finding a laundry service whenever you want/need it.

You will not miss any scheduled organized activity to arrange for laundry service.

on the tours i’ve been on there seemed to be only one day for laundry. For me, it’s easy to wash a few things in the sink. It’s great when the hotels have heated towel racks to aid in the drying.

On my 10-day Tour of Scotland, our RS guide gave us info on a nearby laundry about halfway through the trip in Inverness. I didn't use it, but others did. They dropped off their laundry in the morning or perhaps the afternoon before, participated in the day's activities and then picked it up in the late afternoon. I opted to hand wash a few things during the trip. Rick's guidebooks usually list some laundry facilities in the major towns, and your guide will surely have information about them.

Thank-you all. I feel much better about traveling on a tour with so many options. (We will most likely pay to have our laundry done unless the idea of washing clothes in the sink wears off on us.)

Look at the itinerary for your tour, and note that any place mid-tour that you are at a hotel for 2-3 nights is good opportunity to manage laundry. We chose to have a hotel do it for us even if it was expensive. Other people prefer to find nearest laundromat/launderette during free time. You can ask your tour leader at the beginning of the tour for suggestions on where would be a good opportunity.

You may think this is mad. However bear with me. Sometimes it can be cheaper to buy new undies in packs of five than it is do do a wash, the same for socks it seems wasteful, but so is sitting in a laundromat watching your undies spin around when you could be sightseeing or relaxing in a park with a picnic.

"We will most likely pay to have our laundry done unless the idea of washing clothes in the sink wears off on us."

Well, if you hang around here long enough it might gain some appeal! I don't actually wash in the "sink"...I take a 2 gal ziplock and wash in that. I wear my jeans/pants for several days. Usually I can wear a shirt for several days as well unless it is really hot. I run water in the ziplock, add the hotel shampoo or body wash, put my unders in to soak while I shower in the evening. If I need to wash a shirt, in that goes. If I'm showering before I go out for dinner, then I just put the whole zipped up ziplock on the shower floor to soak while I enjoy my evening, then rinse and hang to dry when I get back in. I carry a plastic hanger that has a hook on it so I can easily hang my shirt and underwear at the same time. All my stuff dries overnight so it's done in the morning.

The 2 tricks are:

• Do a little each night and not let it build up so you are actually having to put out a wash as my grandmother used to say!

• Test wash and hang to dry at home. Only things that dry overnight make the travel team. Weirdly, clothing that has similar fabric content can take very different times to dry so that's why I check ahead.

You don't have to do sink wash. It's just easier for me to do it that way.

Every RS tour I have taken gave one pre determined laundry day about half way through the trip that did not interfere with the scheduled activities. This was told to us during our first evening get together by the tour guide.

Some were special arrangements with the hotel where they would wash and dry what you could fit in a provided bag for a fixed price. No special handling was provided -- everything was washed together and returned dry but not ironed. Since the price was much much lower than normal hotel laundry prices, this worked for me as I normally take clothes that don't really require ironing and are all shades of the same khaki-ish hue and I don't have issues with washing together.

Others were where we were told of nearby laundries where you could sit and watch your clothes spin around. Some of these places also offered a wash, dry, and fold service that was only a couple Euro more than doing it yourself. The one I ended up using in Prague didn't do the wash for you but provided tea and snacks at no additional charge while you waited. Very nice and a relaxing break from the hectic tour that I really needed that afternoon.

Of course you are also free to use the regular hotel laundry services when available, but they can get expensive. Or you can ask the guide about laundry services if you find you need to have something washed earlier than half way. They will know. Your tour book also has these details.