Laundry Day in Rome
A favorite travel day started with a backpack full of wet clothes.
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So there I was, an American doing laundry in a Chinese laundromat in Italy near the Spanish Steps.
I’d trotted off to Europe naively thinking that I would just do my laundry in hotel sinks. This delusion lasted for all of one night. Washing underwear and lightweight shirts in the sink? No problem. But my clothes were of the keep-me-warm variety, did not wash or rinse easily in a sink, and would’ve taken days to dry in a surprisingly humid climate.
The hotel in Rome charged a mere something like 12€ to wash a single item of clothing, and I was like “Heck no…ain’t no way I’m going to afford that.” So I loaded up my still-wet clothes and trotted off to the nearest laundromat—a 20-minute walk through Rome on a Saturday morning. Do you know how heavy wet clothes are when crammed in a backpack and trekked around? I do.
Humbled and grateful to be in a place capable of quickly washing and drying all my clothes, I made halting conversation with fellow travelers and the owner. I got lunch from a local cafe during the drying cycle. Then I packed my now clean and lighter clothes around while exploring an area of the city I wouldn’t have seen otherwise.
Sitting on the Spanish Steps, watching the polizia enforce public decorum—no eating or drinking, no bare feet, no sitting on the wide “walls” of the steps (I really wanted these to be called “balustrades” but sadly this is not the case)—was just one fascinating part of what turned out to be a very memorable day in Rome.
Other parts of my unexpected Roman Saturday included buying new, waterproof trail-running shoes at a Nike store, finding baggy corduroy pants I still regret leaving behind in Florence weeks later, and visiting a famous-looking plaza with an equally famous-looking obelisk.
It turns out that the most familiar of things—laundry on a Saturday morning—in the most unfamiliar places can turn into favorite memories. They can also turn into sore shoulders, but hey, I’ll take the latter if I get the former.
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