Italy by Rail and Ship: Airing Dirty Laundry

Dispatch from Riomaggiore, Cinque Terre, Italy.

It is past 10 p.m. at night and I am sitting here on the town’s main road, waiting for our laundry to finish its wash cycle.  So this post isn’t necessarily about airing out dirty laundry like any secrets or anything, it is really just about laundry!

We planned our trip to have about one week of clothing to wear and then doing laundry every week. We have been fortunate to have our own washing machine at our Airbnb in Lake Como, and a week later we were able to have our laundry done for us when we were on the Celebrity cruise ship. That one was pricey at twenty bucks, but that was actually a special for being a member of their captains Club. The regular special was for $49 for other passengers, so we actually saved quite a bit. However, for the rest of our laundry we have had to seek out self service laundromats and found them in Rome and in Florence. And tonight is our final laundry night before coming back to the States next week.

The average cost is around 5 Euro for one load of wash that lasts about 30 minutes. It has been so hot that we have not needed to dry any of our clothes in the electric dryer, we just hang them up in our hotel room. The challenge though is finding enough things to hang the laundry on. I did bring a small clothes line but it has been difficult to find anchors to attach it to and string it across the room or doorway.

We combine all of our dirty laundry in a dirty laundry bag that has skull and crossbones on it, because it is definitely toxic. With the temperatures hitting triple digits in Fahrenheit here over the past week we have definitely been sweaty and stinky and grimy and nasty. It will definitely be nice to have clean clothes again, although after an hour of walking around they just get all dirty and sweaty again, but it also helps that we have some dry fit items that dry quickly because we knew that Italy would be pretty hot.

At any rate, yes this is my post for the evening, all about laundry. It is a necessary chore that is important and must be done every week and we are just lucky that we have been able to find laundromats pretty close to our hotels and have been able to have clean clothes every week for the duration of our trip. If worst came to worst, I suppose we could always have just washed our clothes in the sink, but that is such a long process and having a washing machine do it all at once in half an hour is just an amazing technological miracle! Oh how I love the 21st century!

Italy by Rail and Ship: Florence Cooking Class

We spent the day learning how to cook a four-course authentic Italian meal, highly recommended!

We started by shopping at the local markets for fresh tomatoes and basil; the bakery for our bread; the cheese monger for Parmesan Reggiano cheese; and the meat market for pork loin and freshly ground beef.  We headed up to the estate in a bus and emptied out into a beautiful kitchen where we all did some hands on learning the fine art of making bruschetta, pizza, fresh pasta and tiramisu.  We ate, drank wine and socialized throughout, culminating in our very large supper and dessert.