River Cruising - Our Thoughts

I will start this by saying, we have had a great holiday. A river cruise has been on our bucket list for a while now, but it is safe to say it is not quite what we expected.

We are experienced ocean cruisers, and absolutely love cruising. We were prepared that this would be different, knowing it is a much smaller ship there would not be the big shows, and range of restaurants etc like you get on the big liners. What were weren't prepared for was the lack of freedom, and the people.

Because it is a smaller group (around 150 passengers) you do see the same people all the time and start to get familiar. There is really only one lounge area, and instead of being able to spend a relaxing afternoon gazing out the window and enjoying the scenery, everyone wants to sit down with you and make small talk. Being introverts we definitely found the lack of personal space a challenge - especially16 days of it. Even dinner was all designed to sit at shared tables, which is not great when the whole ship is sick!

We have always loved cruising as an easy way to get from destination to destination because you unpack once and do all of the travelling while you are sleeping. The evenings are generally full of entertainment and things to do. This is not really the case with a river cruise, you spend a lot of time on the boat, and do a lot of scenic cruising during the day. This is something you do a lot on an Alaskan cruise as well, but you get left alone to enjoy the scenery.

We found the schedule extremely tight, where you don't really get much time in each place - the average would be 2 hours, of which and hour or more was a guided tour, and 45 mins of free time if you were lucky.

We did think we could maybe skip the tours and do our own thing in some locations, but for the most part we were docked a reasonable way away from town. This meant the logical way to get to and from was the tours because they bus you in and out. We definitely did struggle with the lack of freedom and having to live by someone else's very tight schedule. On an ocean cruise you generally get a whole day in each location so you can squeeze a tour in for the morning and still have the afternoon free to explore on your own.

Generally the food was pretty good, although breakfast and lunch were buffet style, so consequently the whole ship got sick. Unfortunately those on board have not learned through the pandemic not to cough into their hands, so it spread like wildfire after the first few days on board. 

We had understood the drinks during lunch and dinner were free, and boy did they make sure you got your money's worth! Every time you had a quarter of a drink left they were topping it up. An extra little bonus we hadn't expected was free drinks through happy hour as well. We had read it was 50% off during happy hour, but it was completely free. So the drinks and food were definitely great value!

There was a definite lack of entertainment on board, and generally what they did have was after 9pm which is a bit late when you are jet lagged. Most of it was pretty average. We were hoping for something like an oompah band seeing as we spent so much time in Germany, but it was a pretty average pub band. One highlight was a zither player who they put on a bit earlier and he was great, but the acts were few and far between. They had a baby grande on board and never had a pianist. A lot of missed opportunities in that space, and the type of entertainment just wasn't quite right for the audience. The concerts on shore that were excursions were brilliant! More of that sort of thing onboard would have kept us pretty happy.

The Sky Deck on the top of the boat was a great location for scenic cruising (probably nicer in summer) and also had a hot tub, and giant outdoor games. We had use of it for approximately 4 days of the 16 day cruise. For the most part it was off limits and all folded down due to the low bridges through the Danube Canal.

Low water levels were also a problem for us after a long hot summer. We were lucky to be travelling with a cruise line that has a lot of ships. This meant rather than being bussed from location to location and staying in hotels, we just had to swap ships. We ended up having to do that twice at the start of the trip due to some tricky locks and spots on the Danube that we couldn't get past, but thankfully we got some rain at the end of the trip that meant we could stay on the Illumination right through to Amsterdam. It didn't really affect us too much in the end other than meaning we had slightly less time in Bratislava.

The crew we had on the first 2 ships were great, but that crew didn't follow us onto the 3rd ship, and the new crew were really lacking. The service was pretty slack, nowhere near as attentive, and they just had really bizarre timings for things they were doing, like washing the stairs in front of the dining room every day through lunchtime, when everyone is trying to use them to get to the dining room. The other frustrating one was breakfast went from 7-9am every day, f you turned up after 8am they were already packing down tables getting ready for lunch service and completely ignored you. It was a mission just to get some to bring you a coffee.

Part of the inclusions is a lot of the tours, mainly walking tours of each location. What we did enjoy is that the guides they use are locals, so they share some really interesting insights into the area and what it is like to live there. 

I think all in all, we have had a nice holiday, and doing a holiday in this way takes all of the thinking and stress out because it is all done for you, but on the flip side is that it does mean you have very little freedom if you want to do something different. It did mean we visited a lot of places we probably otherwise wouldn't have gone to,  so you get to see a different part of the country and culture which was great, particularly the smaller villages on the Daube Canal. It is an interesting environment to be in if you are not that keen on spending your holiday making small talk with other tourists and like your own space.

Our thoughts - we have done it, and it was great, but river cruising is not really for us. We value our independence too much when we travel, and in our view independent travel is a much better option in Europe where getting around is pretty easy.