Best of Sicily: Laundry

I don't recall where I did laundry on this tour as it's been a few years.
RS hotels (most European hotels?) don't have washers available, and have laundry service rarely.
I generally go to a laundromat about halfway through. The guide will have ideas, and I usually check the RS guidebook and google.

When we took the tour in 2022 laundry service was offered in Ortygia. The hotel was run by nuns and they took in the laundry and got it back to us. I’ve gotten more comfortable with using laundromats on tours since. Usually, even if no one is speaking English, people work together to figure out the system. The RS guide books usually have laundromat recommendations and I think on tour this last year I just googled to find one closest to the hotel. We’ve never had a tour hotel with laundry facilities.

We just got back from the Sicily tour. We (and everyone else) did laundry our first night in Ortygia. Our guide pointed us to American LaundryXpress, which was a 24/6 or 7 place a few minutes walk from our hotel. The good news is that it was clean, all the machines worked, we didn’t have to wait as long for laundry as did our buddies who had the hotel do theirs (25 euros a bag), and it was next door to a terrific restaurant. The bad news was that the “change” machine did not provide change, but tokens that were good only in the laundromat (and we didn’t realize this until after we’d given up our real euros) - definitely get change before going there.

As soon as we get the hotel list for a RS tour, we contact every relevant hotel at which we'll be staying for 2 or more nights. They will tell you if they do laundry and how much they charge and also usually know about nearby self-service options. Then we look at Google and TripAdvisor to see if there are issues with the self-service options. That tells us how many changes of clothes we will need. Once you're on tour, your guide/hotel can provide potentially more up-to-date information.

We ended up using the hotel laundry in Siracusa. It was $25 for a bag of clothes. To each their own and all that, but I'm paying a small fortune to be someplace exotic. I don't want to spend my time sitting in a laundrymat. I appreciate the chance to send the laundry out and would appreciate it if RS would include laundry information with the final hotel list.

would appreciate it if RS would include laundry information with the final hotel list

You should send an email with your suggestion to [email protected]

The RS tour department does not generally monitor this forum and likely will not see your suggestion.

Also used the self serve laundry in Ortigia. We had a light afternoon so that's when we did the wash. During the wash cycle, we walked around and stayed in facility during the dry cycle. I can't tell you how good it felt to have clean clothes. We did a good deal of light sweating and this was late March/Early April.

We just returned from that tour. On our walking tour of Ortygia, our local guide pointed out a self-service laundromat. Our hotel in Ortygia, the Lanterne Magiche Ortigia, had large apartment-style rooms with terraces. Ours had a washing machine in the kitchen! (Our guide had mentioned that a couple of the rooms would have washers, but anyone lucky enough to get one should keep it to themselves, or they'd spend the entire time doing other people's laundry!)