I Tried a River Cruise and It Wasn't What I Expected

i have wanted to take a river cruise for years and years and years i've been cruising on the ocean since i was a child and i rather naively thought that that meant that i knew what to expect from a river cruise i did have a few concerns i was worried that river cruise would be overly scheduled i'm not really one for being told when i have to do certain things i had heard that river cruises were boring i was worried that i would be bored possibly even hungry and i did have a few concerns about how i would fit in with the other river cruise passengers but i am a strong believer in the idea that you only live once and you should try everything at least once so i did take my first river cruise i was invited by emerald cruises to take a cruise from owls to leon in the south of france i remember getting through all of the documentation and these goodies that they sent me before the cruise and i was sitting there with this big backpack that they send you in this documents holder and i was looking at this map and it kind of sunk into me me on a river cruise me we started our journey by getting up at 4 30 in the morning and flying to marseille when we got to marseille we met a bus and that took us to the cruise port i say cruise port it's not a cruise port as you would know from an ocean cruise it is just a ship that is docked along the side of the road really it's just docked along the side of the river as soon as we pulled up in the bus i knew that this was gonna be different from what i'm used to on ocean cruising so when we sat there on the bus all of the crew members from the river cruise ship came two car suitcases offered the bus for us took them to the ship for us and sorted out all of that stuff there's no dragging your own bags on a river cruise and all of the tips for all of the people who you come in contact with on the cruise was already paid for so you don't have to worry about finding your porter and tipping them everything is just taken care for you which is strange i would never normally ask a porter to do anything for me but you it was just they just did it they just did it one of my favorite things about cruising in general is that moment when you get on a new ship for the first time and you get to explore it you definitely get that on a river ship but a rivership is only four decks so your exploration doesn't take as long as it does on an ocean ship this ship the emerald liberte is absolutely amazing she's one of the newest river cruise ships i have cruised since on other river cruise ships from the 1990s and although they were great they were nothing compared to this cruise ship this really was and it is just just look at it look at this it was a glorious sunny day when we got there and we explored the top deck which is basically where everybody sunbathes they have mini golf they have this giant chess set which seems to be something that a lot of river cruise lines have and we would spend so much time just sat there with waiters bringing us a drink there wasn't a bar on the top deck but that didn't matter because there were so many waiters who would just get you your order no worries about that at all one thing that i think a lot of people don't know about river cruising and river cruise lines don't really advertise is the fact that there isn't an elevator to the top deck because river cruise ships will go under bridges sometimes they have to squish down everything on the top deck to get under a bridge so on the majority of river cruise ships you will not find any elevator any lift to the top deck which means if you're somebody who cannot walk the stairs to the top deck you could be left unable to get to the top deck throughout your cruise which i think is just important that you know that ahead of time moving on with our exploration we found what i think is my favorite place on this river cruise ship the fact that river cruise ships have swimming pools at all is something that blows my mind but have a look at this this is the swimming pool at the back of the ship and this actually turns into a cinema at night how crazy is that we watched some movies there in the evenings we had a swim there in the day there weren't many people on this ship that's one of my favorite things about river cruising compared to ocean is that there was only around 130 passengers on this cruise something like 70 cabins which meant i could swim by myself whenever i wanted i don't know about you but i find it really awkward when everybody just stands in a swimming pool together that's not really my scene i'd much prefer to wait and have a couple of people in there awesome by myself also by the pool there were cookies that you could eat all of the time there were newspapers in various different languages and everything you could just take and was just free which was really strange for me if you know anything about how i normally cruise i'm normally in that guaranteed inside cabin bottom of the ship cruising in november as cheap as possible where you have to pay for everything so having anything included in a cruise it gets me very very excited and a little jar of cookies that i can eat from all the time that is good that is good for me you also found the main dining room here which was really pretty big much bigger than i thought it would be and on the deck below that you would find the main lounge here you would do things like trivia they would do game shows they would do port talks they would do cheese tasting one of my major concerns really about river cruising before i took my first river cruise was that i would be bored if you type into google right now is river cruising the next word that's going to come up is boring because people think that river cruising is boring i'm not saying that you'll never be bored on a river cruise i'm sure there's rivers and cruise lines that you and i may find boring but i have to say this one was the complete opposite and to be honest by the end of the day on this cruise i was absolutely knackered knackered is your britishism of the week knackered just means really tired and we say knackered all of the time i think knackered is the perfect word to describe how i felt at the end of the day on this cruise because we would walk 20 000 steps per day we would walk up mountains we would do all kinds of stuff we were very very busy they even did acroaerobics really early in the morning i have to say i slept through that every single day but it's nice to know that it's there for those people who are awake early in the morning not me on the bottom deck there was a little spa gym area compared to ocean cruises of course on a river cruise you're not going to have water slides you're not going to have ropes courses or zip lines but you definitely have everything you need on a river ship and just the quality of this ship there was nothing that was scarf there was no paint that was peeling off everything was perfectly in its place i could live on that ship absolutely if my house was like this oh goodness you see this part but the rest of it it does not look as good as this ship i promise once i had gone on board and i had done a little tour we headed to our cabin which was also fantastic it was just as good as the rest of the ship and that made me feel a little bit more relaxed i feel a lot happier when i know where i'm staying i know i'm supposed to be there i know i'm on the right cruise and i am the right person and then i feel like i can relax a little bit so i definitely felt a bit of relief i thought i'm gonna be very very happy here very comfortable in that bed very happy with this bathroom my balcony loads of storage i can take a breath now i love that moment when you finally sit down and you're like ah this is going to be a good week after that of course your brain does go to having a drink and on this river cruise beer wine and soft drinks were included with all of your meals not just when you're actually eating it in the main dining room but just at meal times they do have drinks packages too if you want to have drinks outside of those hours or you can just pay as you go the drinks really weren't too expensive and you would be surprised how much you can drag out your lunch and dinner drinks i did have a drinks package and by the end of the cruise all of the waiters knew what you wanted i could order a drink just with like a and then they would bring me exactly what i wanted it was really good because so many drinks are included in most river cruises most river cruises will include beer wine and soda with meals because of that the drinks packages are so much cheaper than you'll find on ocean cruises the drinks packages on this cruise i believe are around 10 to 20 euros per day for everything else on an ocean cruise you could spend 80 per day on a drinks package easily now i knew where i was staying and i knew that i loved the ship i moved on to the next concern i constantly have concerns this is just how i am the next thing i thought about was how am i gonna fit in with everybody else on this cruise are they gonna like me are they gonna wonder you know why am i here i was much younger than everybody else on this cruise river cruising is more expensive than ocean cruising and as a result it does tend to be an older passenger demographic on the rivers versus the ocean that's just how it works there are some river cruise lines that have really good kids offers a rosa are really good for children but generally speaking if you were to pick any river any river cruise ship you're going to find an older passenger demographic on there versus any random ocean ship it's just how it is the process of socializing on a river cruise is also very different to an ocean cruise when you're on a ship with 100 passengers you see the same people all of the time when you sit in the lounge you will see the same people sat in the same place having the same drinks you will see the same people at dinner when you do the excursions you will be on there with the same people so you really get to know everybody so much more than you do on an ocean cruise when i go on an ocean cruise i go on the ocean cruise to spend time with the people that i have gone with if that's my family if that's my friends if that's my boyfriend i've gone to spend time with the people that i've taken with me i know a lot of people love to chat around the people at the bar and make loads of new friends for me that's not something i normally seek out on an ocean cruise so on this river cruise i knew that that was something that i would have to do i would have to be sociable i couldn't avoid it because i couldn't i couldn't avoid it you can't you cannot escape and i was hoping that i would be okay with that i was it was fine it was good in the afternoon we had a really good chance to get to know the other people on the cruise and there was a orientation walk it wasn't really at all it was just a kind of free walk around town so that we could get our bearings and work out where we were the next day we actually had an included excursion with a local tour guide which was really good one of my favorite things about this was how easy it was to do excursions compared to ocean cruising on our river cruise there was an excursion included every single day and you just step off the ship you have a tiny little barcode you scan beep scan it yourself you get off the ship and you're there by the side of the ship you are ready to go on your excursion there was a walking tour included pretty much every day i think every day and the walking tour was split up into different groups based on speed i always went for the fastest speed being in my 20s i thought fastest speed group i'm gonna do this i have to admit sometimes my fitbit didn't even recognize the fact that i had been exercising so it definitely wasn't a fast walk but that's not the point you don't really go on it for the walk you go on it to stop and look at that and have a bit of history about this and your tour guide will tell you a story about how his family grew up here we would often come back to the ship and we would do another walk in the afternoon if there was something we wanted to see we would go and do that we went to a photography museum where they had all of these disposable cameras as a display which confused me a little bit the disposable cameras are already in museums but that was really good we had the freedom to go to the pub if we wanted to it really wasn't this strict schedule that i felt like i had to stick to that was one thing i was worried about before i took my river cruise i had heard that it was kind of very much like a holiday camp like beep get up at this time breakfast for half an hour go excursion walk and it was nothing like that the breakfast lasted from 6 30 in the morning i never was up that early until around 10 there was some food that you could have so it really wasn't this strict schedule that i feared we had loads of time to do our own thing but if you want to go on the free included excursion if you want to go on a free hike up a mountain i hiked up a mountain on this cruise then you just show up and you go and it's so easy so so much easier than an ocean cruise for sure we had a really good time on our orientation walk and we did get to know quite a lot of other people who we will get to know so much better throughout the next week most people just assumed i was there on my honeymoon or maybe i was there with my parents i think i did stand out a little bit but everybody was so nice and interested in me which was really strange i knew so many people's names by the end of this cruise i knew more people's names on this week-long cruise than every other cruise that i've ever done put together i'm sure i'm sure i did probably forgot most of them now but it was really nice it was really strange to walk in the lounge and people be like oh hey emma hi it was it was surreal but it was really cool after we had done our orientation walk and we had got our bearings there was a welcome talk in the main lounge where they explained everything about river cruising everything about the life that happens on board how your excursions work where you eat what the dress codes are everything like that i was relieved to find out that emerald don't have formal nights they do have some dress codes in the main dining room but as long as you're if you're a man and you're wearing a shirt or if you're a lady and you're wearing a blouse or a dress or something like that you'll be completely fine i never really got the vibe that the other passengers or the crew were watching me and judging what i was wearing which was really nice i have felt like that before on ocean cruises so it was really nice it did feel very relaxed even though it was very elegant surroundings and the food was very very very good it was kind of so good that i don't even think i could appreciate it because i didn't know how good this thing was but it tasted nice and that was the main thing for me the dinner was at a set time but what i liked was that it was just freestyle seating i did have a bit of a worry before this cruise that i will be sat on a table 410 of people that i don't know i had nothing in common with but that was not a problem at all i did take a saga river cruise the year later where we did have fixed dining and i was unbelievably lucky with my table mates i think it can make a huge difference if you get somebody who's nice versus somebody who you don't really look forward to dinner i personally do just prefer this freestyle dining come and sit and eat and most i think every night actually we did manage to get a table for two we would sometimes chat to our friends that we'd been on excursions with but i didn't feel that pressure to kind of perform and be sociable that sometimes you get on some cruises i do remember one of the waiters asked a man how his food was and he said his food was fine and the waiter's heart like it was about to break the man actually was joking and he said ah just kidding it's fantastic but the man's heart when he thought that the food was fine they would do anything for you i'm sure and that's one thing that's really good about river cruises is because you have a hundred passengers they can really deal with food intolerances i would say better than ocean cruises every night on this cruise i had the menu or you could see the menu ahead of time and it had loads of allergen information on it which was really good and i have no doubt that if you wanted to create a strange concoction of this and this and this but without this and cooked like this and this on the side they would have done it they've only got 100 passengers which if i had to cook for 100 passengers that would be an absolute disaster but compared to the 5 000 meals they might get out on an ocean ship they can do it much better although the dining times were fixed the breakfast and the lunch were much more flexible they would have a main dining room lunch which was kind of like a buffet but also there were some things that you could order off the menu and they would have a lighter lunch in the main lounge which really is a bit of a trick just because it says lighter lunch you think that it's all healthy and you can eat as much as you want but you can absolutely eat so much at that lighter lunch and it's really good one of my favorite things we had was a huge barbecue up on the top deck and i've never smelled anything like it it was amazing we had come back from our included tour in the morning had this massive barbecue and then we hiked up a mountain in the afternoon we exercised a lot on this cruise and we ate a lot too after dinner there is entertainment in the lounge it would normally be a game show or something like that one of my favorite game shows that we watched on this cruise was called call my bluff and you would have various staff members who all of them spoke different languages and they would be given a word and they would have to say to the audience what that word meant in romanian or german and they would all but one be making it up so you had to guess which one was actually telling the truth about the word and some of the things that people came up with just on the fly it was so funny this one man in my group he was crying just from laughing for i think a good hour it was really really funny river cruise evenings do end earlier i think than on ocean cruises sometimes we would be up until 11 or midnight things will be happening karaoke music in the lounge they often have on river cruises local acts that they will get in who will come on and do a hungarian dance for you or something like that but because you get up so early to do your excursions in the morning and have breakfast your kind of day is just shifted earlier than it would be on an ocean cruise on an ocean cruise for me i might not get up until 10 a.m but then also i'll stay awake later on a river cruise every day i think i was up at eight i think eight because normally my excursion started at nine sometimes they started earlier it does depend on the river and where you're going how much time you will spend docked and how much time you will spend in the river in the river on the river on my danube cruise we actually had a river day which isn't something that i i even knew was a thing so it's definitely worth looking into the different rivers and picking one that kind of fits with what you want if you want to spend a river day in the sun just chilling out the cruise i took on the danube would be fantastic for that but if you want to hike up a mountain you want to do walking tours you want to do evening tours that river wouldn't work well for you because you would be in the river and you can't get off so it's definitely worth just researching the rivers before you go there are a few things that river cruise lines will never tell you in the advertisements about river cruising like the fact that sometimes ships dock one by one next to each other and to get to your ship you might have to walk over two or three or four ships to get to your ship and when they dock like that you can see into the ship opposite so you better hope that that person is um fully dressed if someone is opposite you to find out what river cruise lines don't tell you in their adverts make sure you watch this video next

Channel: Emma Cruises

Views: 1,560,751

Keywords: river cruising, river cruise, european river cruise

Id: Dz7qfdHb_Mo

Length: 17min 47sec (1067 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 25 2021