River cruises
- hwya1a
- Mar 21
- 3 min read
Updated: Mar 25
Luxury river cruising in Europe.
There are several river cruise companies with Viking Cruises being the most well known. Other river cruise companies such as AmaWaterways, Uniworld, Emerald and the one I traveled on for this blog, Avalon Cruise Line.
First a little bit about cruising the European rivers and the ships that you sail on. Viking Cruises calls them longships, ranging from around 360 to 450 feet in length. Typically the ships have three decks with two above the waterline and that sits below with a small porthole at water level. The size of these of the ships are dictated by the numerous bridges they must pass under and the locks that they must traverse. As opposed to today's mega ocean liners that accommodate several thousands of travelers, river cruise ships only have around 60 staterooms or about 120 passengers. The crew size is roughly half that size ensuring great customer care. The staterooms are well designed most with a balcony or as the case is with Avalon a floor to ceiling patio door that opens completely allowing a great view and a wonderful open air feeling.
Rivers. There are river cruises for all the major waterways including the Rhine, Seine, Danube, Rhone and lesser known ones like the Moselle and the Douro in Portugal. Sometimes your itinerary might be changed up along the way due to flooding or low water levels, but the cruise lines have several work arounds to ensure you still have great experience. Don't let the water levels scare you as you will see in the blog.
With Avalon and Viking and the other river cruise companies you can add pre-cruise or post cruise stays in different cities. We opted to book our own flights and pre-cruise accommodations as we wanted to spend some time in Paris. Icelandair flew us to Iceland then on to Paris where we stayed at the boutique hotel The Whistler. The rooms at the Whistler are all based on vintage train car berths which makes sense as the hotel is located an easy walk across from Gare du Nord.
From Paris we traveled by train to Luxembourg City the starting point of our Moselle and Rhine river cruise. Which, you will see as you read on, wasn't our actual port of embarkation.
On to the cruise. The cruise was booked on the Avalon Tranquility II (not sure what happened to the first one) from Remich Luxembourg to Frankfort along the Moselle, Rhine and Main. Our itinerary started, or was suppose to start in Remich Luxembourg onboard the ship, but mother nature had other plans. Heavy rains caused flooding on the Moselle preventing the ship to make it Remich. So we were now going to board the ship in Trier Germany but the rising water levels forced the Tranquility to leave the Moselle and dock on the Rhine at Koblenz. So, with one day to go until the cruise Avalon scrambled to figure out a new plan. And kudos to Avalon, they did a magnificent job creating a whole new itinerary and taking care of the 102 passengers on our cruise.
The cruise was scheduled to depart from Luxembourg but without the ship being able to make port in Remich we were to board In Koblenz Germany. So what to you do with the 102 passengers that arrived in Luxembourg City? Well Avalon arrange for all the passengers to have accommodations in a 5 star hotel, the Le Royal, for the evening, not too shabby. Because of the inconvenience and the new itinerary Avalon offered to rebook the river cruise at no cost or to continue on with a few extra perks. Only two people chose to rebook while we and the others decided to keep going. Avalon provided each passenger with 75 Euros for lunch and dinner plus refunded two prorated days of the cruise cost. That is one top notch river cruise company! In addition a cocktail party was arranged at the hotel that evening and breakfast at the hotel's French restaurant Amelys the next morning.
Stay tuned for the next day...
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