laundry and dry cleaning in italy

First, we never take anything that needs to be dry cleaned. Second, we take mostly synthetic clothing with a min of cotton so that it is easy to clean and dry. We try to do laundry about once a week. We will ask the hotel for nearest self service. Often the self service is staffed and for a fee will wash, dry, fold it for you. Leave it for a couple of hours and return for it. Sometimes the smaller hotels will offered to do in the early morning before their machines are tied up with the daily room change over. We have never had any problem with damaged or lost clothing. Don't remember the pricing but think it was generally in the range of 5 to 10E per load. Not cheap but not overly expensive either.

Sorry Chuck, I can't help with Bologna the Red (or Bologna the Fat), Fabulous Florence or Ravishing Rome because although we love them we've never done our laundry there. We have had very good luck leaving our stuff, as suggested above, with the owner of laundries in various parts of Austria, Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands. Never had a problem, my wife got to practice the local language, saved a half day waiting for machines, and made local friends. ...... ...... I'm glad you have decided to leave some stuff at home and wash the rest. That's a wise decision. I have no reason to believe that the Italian equivalents to my story would be any different.

We used both self-serve and serviced laundries on our recent trip to Italy (with 2 daughters, there was lots of laundry). And my husband had his suit pressed at a dry-cleaner in Milan (yes, he took a suit, because we had tickets for a ballet at La Scala). We were very happy with all the services. The serviced laundry returned everything nicely folded and packaged in a wrapper. They would not, however, do any lingerie[INVALID]-it seemed they were concerned about damage to the lacy things. I don't know if this is a general policy or just that one place.

Usually, we don't take anything that requires dry cleaning. I do make exceptions to take a tie and nice shirt for the rare nice restaurant when we have planned a really nice dinner. My wife is able to do much of her laundry in the room. It's dry by morning. My cotton scrungies won't dry completely overnight so I plan to drop by a public laundry or two during a 3-week trip and do laundry. I've done this in Florence, La Spezia and in two places in England. It keeps the luggage bulk and weight down.