We spent most of our time in Italy, so I am not sure if this is just an Italian thing or not. The towels in hotels/agriturismos were the smallest thinnest towels I had ever seen.
We saw this in at least three different locations. Is this normal? Where they really only handtowels and we were expected to bring our own? They were 80% of the area of a normal towel, just 10 times thinner.
I would also like to say that this is not a typical “big fat American” problem. My wife and I are about 100 lbs (45 Kg) and 125lbs (56 Kg), respectively, and we had a hard time drying off with these things.
NOTE: I am not complaining exactly, I travel to other countries to experience different cultures. I am just trying to figure out some semblance of an explanation as to why.
Oh, Europe has godawful towels… and no washcloths! The towels don’t dry like a good American towel, either. I’ve stayed in nice hotels over most of Europe and have yet to see what I’d consider a proper towel.
It’s quite common in Italy, and it’s like trying to dry yourself with a sheet. A very small sheet. As I recall it (but I may be wrong), the other parts of Europe I visited had actual towels, but perhaps slightly on the small side.
Bad towels, and hard bread rolls for breakfast, are seemingly unavoidable aspects of being a tourist in Europe.
Sure, our roads are crap, we have no healthcare, and God forbid you lose your job. Yes, we are #15 in Internet speed, and our schools aren’t quite as good as Latvia’s, but we have the best damn towels and the softest toilet tissue in the world!
I have been in Italy four times in the last 20 years, probably stayed in 15 hotels. I consistently found towels large enough, but tending to be thin, waffle-weave types. I have no idea why anyone would prefer them. Some of the fancier hotels have nicer towels (I’ve stayed in a wide range of hotels there), more like the American standard.
The standard in American hotels is thicker, terrycloth towels. And shower curtains or doors that completely enclose the shower
Thin towels are easier and cheaper to launder. They harbour less dirt and detritus to begin with; they take up less space and consume less energy in the washing; they dry more easily. For these reasons they are common in European homes, and your basic/standard/family European hotel tends to favour them. More upmarket hotels will offer the decadent, effeminate, character-sapping towels whose prevalence in the US is largely responsible for the collapse in American prestige worldwide.
Thin towels have advantages for the traveller too. They also ry more quickly when simply hanging – if you have a shower in the evening before going to bed, your towel will be dry in the morning. If you are carrying your own towel, as a backpacker would, the saving in space and weight and the quick drying capacity are invaluable features. The fact that it feels like wet-and-dry sandpaper is a small price to pay.
I’m a european resident and I don’t recognise this problem at all.
If I stay in a guest house, hotel or apartment across Europe, the default is big fluffy towels. I’m scratching my head to think of any occasion when your scenario applies.
Though I will say that when I’m in the US for business I’m struck by the same-ness of the hotels. So maybe small differences across hotels in Europe are amplified for you and simply pass me by?
But I think I’d notice poor towels, I’m a real stickler for fluffiness at home.
I have never been to Italy, but I grew up in Britain and (and have been in cheapish hotels in a few other European countries) and have now also lived for 20 years in the U.S.A. I have never noticed any particular difference between the two continents in respect of the towels available in either homes or hotels. If I had ever been offered towels like the ones shown in the OP, I think I would have remembered. They do not seem at all adequate, and are certainly nothing like what I was used to at home in Britain.
I have travelled quite a bit through Northern Italy recently. I’ve never noticed towels like this in hotels. Further, my Italian flatmate from the north of Italy doesn’t use towels that look anything like that (they use what we would back in the UK: big, fluffy towels). However, my southern Italian flatmate does something strange: he doesn’t actively dry himself, just sit in his room with a bath robe on. Where were you in Italy?
Seriously, you have to be excited about something. If we just hung out heads and admitted we’re not very good at much of anything we might as well have stayed British.
The towels pictured in the OP are extreme cases, but even in England the towels weren’t really up to the American standard, especially not in size. I’ve stayed in hotels at lots of different price points.
