It’s still kind of hard for me to wrap my arms around the fact that I’m actually giving European travel advice — just call me Rickie Steves! I waited for many years for my European shot and it has been everything I hoped it would be. Both of my kids went to Europe twice before I got my chance — and I don’t regret sending them — but I’ve been taking advantage of being an empty nester for the last few years. Viva England and France (to mix my languages)!
I just had to show you why one doesn’t want to throw one’s laundry on the floor when one is staying in a ritzy London flat. We managed to score this fabulous apartment at the Sloane Club (wait for it to load; it’s worth it) because the studio we actually booked was being renovated and we got the duplexed one bedroom (that’s an understatement) for the same price.
This was our closet, the home of our dirty laundry. And yes, that’s a trouser press in the right corner. Gosh darn it, I love England — all I need is Jeeves.
After having been to England three times and France once in the last three years, my advice is to pack some laundry equipment.
One of the things I hate when I’m going to stay more than one night in one place is throwing my dirty clothes on the closet floor (I’m pretty sure the person before me in that room still has cooties in the carpet) or crunching them into plastic bags. I now pack a pop-up laundry basket. Genius. It works for the dirty clothes and it works when we have to do some laundry outside the hotel room or in our rental apartment. It also works if we take a picnic blanket and stuff to the beach. The pop-up mechanism means that it folds flat in my suitcase and takes up practically no room or weight. Combined with two plastic pants hangers, two plastic shirt hangers (with the hooks for camisoles), and our trusty stretch clothesline and plastic clothespins, we are able to do laundry in our hotel rooms and also hang not-quite-dry laundry from the European washer/dryer combo.
Life was all good until I found THIS. I’m tempted to give my boring hamper to someone else, and buy this hamper for myself and every other girlie I know. Who doesn’t want a little black brocade in her closet, even while on vacation?
Image via victoriantradingco.com
P.S. I would have linked up Wikipedia for the Jeeves reference, but I support the blackout. Tell your Congresspeople that SOPA isn’t the way to suppress internet crime.
P.P.S. E-mail me if you want me to hook you up with my travel agent; she may be the only full-service agent left in the United States!
P.P.P.S. It’s amazing what WordPress doesn’t know how to spell. I’m just sayin”…
I am remembering the combination washer/dryer we had in the Cotswalds, that never did dry. A clothesline and clothes pins is a good idea, as is a few packets of lingerie soap.
The Sloane Place closet certainly beats any I ever had in England!
Kathy, we could have hung our laundry on the deck. They thought we were ugly Americans anyway.
Did you cry all the way home? I’m afraid once I get over there I won’t want to return until I’ve seen:
Spain (for Gaudi),
England and Oxford (for CS Lewis and Carroll and all things London),
Ireland (for relatives, CS Lewis and Game of Thrones is being filmed there),
Italy (for relatives and just because of everything there)
and Greece (for the antiquities, Corfu for Gerald Durrell’s “My Family And Other Animals” and Santorini just because it looks amazing….)
Your photos are amazing, and I love the pop-up laundry idea. Genius.
The laundry hamper also ZIPS UP! That was in the fine print and I think that would be valuable if using it for a beachy trip or taking laundry to the local cleaner.
I always cry when I return home from a trip. I feel as though I’ve gotten the hang of things and then I have to give it all up. That’s why we like returning to a place we’ve been dreaming about for years. The first time through is kind of like going to Disneyworld — hit the high spots just in case you never come back and tour till you drop. The second time around you can go back to the places you missed — the Rodin Museum in Paris, and we never went up in the Eiffel Tower, for example — and settle into the place comfortably. There’s time to sit in the park and watch the people.
All of your places are on my list, and I think it’s funny that you link up places to books. I do that too, but there are also fab web sites that show you where movies were filmed, which floats my boat. I am understandably eager to go back to Paris and find the Midnight in Paris sites. Mmmmm.
My son went to a wedding on Santorini; I’ll ask him to do a guest post. His photos look just like Mamma Mia!