| Several years ago, I took a two week cruise in the Med on the Stella
Solarius to Greek Isles, Turkey, Egypt, and Israel. At the time, it
was a fabulous ship and I expect it still is. In fact, a couple
of love boat episodes were filmed on it (guest captain and crew, etc.).
The ship has a Greek crew (which is sort of fun) and that also means
the Greek style of (communistic) tipping. I.e., you put everything in
one envelope and dump it in a box and they distribute it rather than
individual tipping.
In terms of laundry, never been on a ship that didn't provide
something. Some don't have dry cleaning but all have some sort of
arrangements for getting laundry done. On some, there is a laundromat,
on some you send it out (try not to pay too much attention to the
price - can you say expensive), some have both available. If you send
it out, they'll bill your cabin and it usually takes a couple of days
to get it back. Really works basically the same as a hotel. You pack
up what you want done in a plastic bag, write down an inventory, and
point it out to your cabin steward. When its done, they will deliver
it to your room.
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| On both cruises I've been on, there have been great laundry facilities
available - washers, dryers, even ironing board and iron. Found early
morning was a great time to get in and out before everyone else started
stirring from the previous evening's events. On one of the cruises,
the facilities were free, on the other there was a minimal charge.
Believe for both cruise lines, their info book had a small blurb on the
laundry facilities.
While on my Alaskan 2 week cruise, there was an accident and the warm
jacket I was wearing at the time had to be dry-cleaned. The cruise
director's staff took care of it for me since it was their fault. It
took a couple of days to get it back -- they had it cleaned and then
"flown" to our port of call on the day it was ready by seaplane.....
That's the only problem I can see with having to have something
drycleaned while on a cruise -- it will have to catch up to you if you
aren't staying in the port long enough for it to be done, so you might
find you don't get it back when originally promised because of the
transportation problems.
Hope this helps too.
Pat
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