The phone call we take most often goes something like this: “We’d like to travel, but we’re not sure about a long flight or rolling out of a coach into a new hotel every night.”
Our answer is almost always the same: have you considered a river cruise?
Here’s what we love about them, in plain terms:
- Flat water. Even seasoned ocean cruisers prefer rivers for the days when they don’t want to think about it.
- You unpack once. Every morning you wake up somewhere new, but the wardrobe is already arranged.
- Smaller ships mean smaller groups. A typical European river ship carries 150 guests. A Murray paddle-steamer carries 60. You see the same friendly faces all week.
- Most ports are right in the centre of town. No tendering, no buses to a far-away dock. You walk off the ship straight into the old town.
- Single timezone. The body clock catches up on day one and stays caught up.
The European rivers — Rhine, Danube, Douro, Rhône — get the most attention, and rightly. But our own Murray River paddle-steamers (the Emmylou, the Murray Princess) are doing the same job at a fraction of the airfare. We have an Australian-built operator we book most often for these; call us and we’ll talk you through the deck-plan differences.
The Christmas-markets sailings on the Rhine and Danube in late November are the ones our team books for themselves. They sell out in March. If you’re thinking 2027, now is the time to put a refundable deposit on a 2026 voyage to see if it’s for you.