Many people who’ve only done big ocean cruises have never experienced a river cruise, and that’s a shame. They’re a singularly unique experience: they’re more relaxing, they offer more sightseeing, and you can really get to know your fellow passengers.
What are River Cruise Ships Like?
River cruise vessels are usually only 4 decks – they have to be low in order to fit under bridges on the rivers – and much more compact than ocean-going ships. While you may have a pool, and you’ll almost certainly have a small gym and spa, you won’t have many of the diversions of big ships, like water slides and casinos.
But the trade-off here is that with this smaller size comes the opportunity to really get to know your fellow travelers. With a total capacity of just 100-150 guests, depending on the ship, and one main restaurant and one main lounge/showroom, you’ll be bumping into the same people all the time. Unlike a 4,000 person ocean cruise where you meet someone nice on the first day and never see them again, on a river cruise you’ll get to see them again and again, and really develop a relationship if you so choose.
River cruise ships are basically made up of six components:
- The cabins
- A spa
- A very small gym
- One or two restaurants
- A main lounge (the showroom for entertainers)
- A top deck with lots of chairs for watching the passing scenery, space for dance or cocktail parties, and sometimes a pool
Now, river ships in Europe in particular are all pretty similar in terms of the size of the cabins and layout of the ships. There can be BIG differences in the quality of the cabins and the overall ship among the various cruise lines in Europe, but Brand g typically only uses Amadeus and Ama, two premium brands, with new ships and contemporary décor.
There are basically 3 types of cabins:
- The biggest number of cabins are the standard cabins on decks 2 and 3. They’re typically about 180 square feet, or roughly the same size as a standard ocean cruise ship cabin.
A few river ships have balconies, but most don’t – and frankly, you may not want a balcony, because it can eat into the interior floor space. The good news is that even though the rooms aren’t big, the wall facing out is almost entirely windows, with (on the ships Brand g uses) a huge window that opens electronically, so you get that feeling of a balcony.
It’s the concept that some ocean cruise lines like Celebrity are now doing with their “infinite balcony” rooms, where there’s just a large electronic window instead of actual step-out balcony space. It gives you more space in the room.
And then there are the lower-floor cabins, which are either the same size as the standard rooms or maybe just a tad smaller. The biggest difference is that these rooms only have a porthole window instead of the big wall of windows.
- And then at the top of the cabin ladder, of course, are the suites. The number of these varies by ship, but with many river cruise lines, it’s only 4-6 suites per ship. However, most of Brand g’s ships will have 12 suites. These generally run 300-325 sq feet, and they do often include a small balcony.
Tip: The suites are typically the first cabins to get sold on our cruises, so if that’s what you’re gunning for, book as soon as you can after the cruise opens.
The good news, though, is that there aren’t really bad rooms on any river cruise ship. The second and third floor rooms are generally more desirable because of the wall of windows, but otherwise, it doesn’t make that much difference which floor you’re on, or whether you’re near the front or back. (If you’re mobility-impaired, however, you might want to score a forward room – closer to the front of the ship – so that you’re closer to the main spaces like the restaurant and lounge.
An Advantage of River Cruising Over Ocean Cruising
BECAUSE river cruise ships – like Brand g’s superyacht ocean cruises – are so much smaller than their big-ship ocean counterparts, when you arrive in a city on a river cruise (or a superyacht) – let’s say Vienna, for example – the ship parks right downtown. You walk off, and you’re right in the middle of the action. You don’t have to be bused for an hour or two to the city from some outlying port.
We’ve all been on large ocean cruises where we were visiting some city like Florence or Berlin or Marrakech, and they required a 1-3 hour bus or train ride from the port to the actual city.
This also means that if your river cruise has an overnight in a city – we often overnight in places like Vienna or Budapest or Paris – you can easily spend the evening in the city and then just walk or take an Uber back to the ship. If you’re on a big ocean cruise that docks at some outer port city, that’s not an option.
Touring on a River Cruise
Another way that river cruising is different from ocean cruising is that there are no “sea days”. Since you’re on a river where destinations are close to each other, you’re in port every day. So, there will be one or two or different shore excursions offered each day.
Now, as part of Brand g’s all-inclusive pricing, we include shore excursions – few if any mainstream river cruises include them. Some tours are walking tours, some are done with buses – it just depends on the destination. And then sometimes there will be an optional tour, usually with a small additional fee.
The good news is that these additional-cost optional tours aren’t expensive. We’ve all seen how stupidly high big cruise ship shore excursions can be…but Brand g doesn’t make a dime on these optional tours – we just offer them at our cost. So most optional tours tend to be like $50 or $75. Occasionally, one will be higher – like our tour from Melk, Austria (a Danube port stop) to Salzburg, which is Mozart’s birthplace and the city where The Sound of Music was filmed. This one is $135; but it’s a 9-hour, all day tour.
The reason some tours are optional is that they typically involve pricier elements, and they’re often not something everyone on the ship will want to do. So, we don’t want to include them and raise the overall fare for everyone.
What European Rivers Does Brand g Sail On?
Just about every major river in Europe.
For 2026, we have 5 European river cruises on 5 different rivers:
Paris, Normandy & the Seine in May
Lisbon & the Douro (Portugal) in June
Castles of the Rhine in August
Budapest to Bucharest, also in August
Prague & the Danube in Sept
We also have one European ocean cruise for 2026, a Mediterranean cruise from Barcelona to Athens that hits 5 countries – Greece, Italy, Malta, Spain and Tunisia. This cruise is aboard a superyacht (the term for those luxurious small ocean-going cruise ships that hold just a couple hundred people). Brand g has done half a dozen of these superyacht ocean cruises now, and our guests absolutely love them.
And for 2027, we have 3:
Castles of the Rhine in June
Prague & the Danube in August
Burgundy & Provence in Sept/Oct
Paris, Normandy & the Seine River Cruise
Who can ever get enough of dreamy Paris? But what makes this cruise special, beyond the fact that it begins and ends in The City of Light, is that – along with stopping in charming French villages that were home to Monet and Van Gogh, etc. – it goes to Normandy.
Normandy is, of course, the site of the landing beaches where the tide of World War II turned. We’ve all seen the brutal first 15 minutes of Saving Private Ryan, and it’s incredibly profound to stand on beautiful, tranquil Omaha Beach and try to imagine the horrors that happened there 80 years ago.
These horrors are brought to life by the fact that there are a number of still-standing Nazi bunkers. Tragically, they were built by the captives from the concentration camps. Imagine what it must have felt like for these poor enslaved Jewish people to be forced to build bunkers from which the Nazis killed thousands of the soldiers who wanted to save them.
The other incredible element of Normandy is the American Cemetery, which is next to Omaha Beach. It’s a huge, really grand cemetery – but it’s the thousands of identical white crosses of the burial plots of these American soldiers that will really do you in. If that doesn’t give you a sense of the scope of the loss, nothing will.
Lisbon & the Douro River Cruise
The Douro makes an incredibly scenic journey through Portugal, sailing through valleys where the mountainsides are covered in terraced vineyards.
This cruise begins in Lisbon (with two nights on the ship) and ends in Porto (with one night on the ship), and those two cities alone make this cruise worth the price of admission. Lisbon is Portugal’s San Francisco – it’s hilly and has lots of cool restaurants and hotels, along with tons of history. There are also fabulous nearby sites, like Sintra.
And Porto is incredibly scenic and charming in its riverside setting. As the home of port wines, it offers an unbelievable variety of ports. If you thought this was just a “sugar wine”, you’ll be genuinely surprised by the many appellations. There are extremely high-quality ports to be had.
Tip: Porto is just a 2.5 hour train ride from Lisbon (with frequent daily trains), so your best bet is to fly roundtrip to Lisbon, and just train from Porto to Lisbon when the cruise ends and fly out from there.
This cruise will be on the beautiful AmaSintra, which just debuted, so it’ll still be all sparkly and new.
Castles of the Rhine River Cruise
This cruise is really special in 2026, because it sails from Amsterdam during World Pride!
And we certainly recommend that you come early to take in some of the Pride events. If you’ve never done Pride in Amsterdam, it’s an absolute blast. The entire city turns out for it, and the Pride parade is a floating one – they do it on the canals, which makes it incredibly memorable. There are tons of small boats tied to the walls of the canals, and people are partying in those boats as they watch the parade; and watching the people in those boats can be as entertaining as the actual parade.
The World Pride Parade is on August 1st, and the cruise leaves on August 3rd. So you’ll even have a day in between to recover. (We’re only thinking of you.)
https://pride.amsterdam/en/worldpride/
The high point of a Rhine cruise is seeing all the castles on the Rhine. It’s like a giant Disneyland of medieval fortresses and palaces. One day, we spend the afternoon cruising the stretch that has the most castles, so you can get a ton of photos and scratch your Instagram itch. It’s called the Upper Middle Rhine Valley, and it’s a UNESCO World Heritage site, for good reason. Sailing through it, you’ll feel like a Disney Princess, but without the churro stands and sweaty kids yanking on your dress.
Budapest to Bucharest River Cruise
Budapest is a gorgeous gothic city, and this cruise overnights there at the start of the cruise. But with just one night on the ship in Budapest, we’d recommend you come a day or two early to really enjoy the city.
Now, this is what is known as a “Lower Danube” cruise, since it hits ports in the Eastern European countries of Croatia, Serbia and Romania. And that’s what makes this cruise so popular – it offers a ton of cities that most people haven’t done.
And this cruise will be on Amadeus’ newest ship, the Aurea, which debuts in May of 2026…so talk about new. It will be a spectacular experience, because these new Amadeus ships are quite glam – very contemporary and cool.
One final note: this cruise is back-to-back, date-wise, with the Castles of the Rhine. The Rhine cruise ends on August 10th, and this one begins on August 12th, so you have plenty of time to fly from Basel, Switzerland (where the Rhine cruise ends) to Budapest, which is an easy and cheap flight. There are nonstop flights on the budget carriers for like $100, or connecting flights on the big carriers like KLM for $150.
So, you can sail two very different regions of Europe in one fell swoop! If you have the vacation time and the financial wherewithal to do this, we always recommend it, because you’re only flying to Europe once, which saves a ton on airfare. If you fly business class, you’ll almost save enough to pay for the second cruise.
Prague & the Danube River Cruise
We call this our “Greatest Hits” cruise, because, for one thing, it’s such a popular route that we’ve done it every year since we started – so about 15 times.
The trip begins with two nights in Prague, a city that was never bombed during WWII, so it has a very storybook feel, with all these incredible, intact, thousand-year-old buildings. (You’ve seen photos of the dramatic, statue-lined Charles Bridge, even if you don’t know that it’s in Prague.)
Tip: If you’re a fan of art glass, stop into Blu (there are several locations) in Prague for bargains on gorgeous glass pieces: vases, sculptures, glassware, etc. (They will ship to your home in the U.S. for a modest fee if you don’t want to carry your purchases.)
Then the cruise heads down the Danube, hitting Vienna and Budapest, among others. Vienna is one of the most memorable cities in Europe because of its grandness. The Ringstrasse that rings the city center has dozens of huge, gorgeous buildings, like the Vienna Opera House, Parliament, Hofburg Palace, Schonbrunn Palace, etc.
Now, this is the cruise with the optional day trip to Salzburg, which we mentioned earlier and which we highly recommend if you’re up for a semi-long tour day. Even if you don’t love The Sound of Music – and you may lose your gay card over that – you’ll have a very memorable day seeing Mozart’s birthplace, the super-charming walled Old Town, etc. It’s definitely worth the slight additional cost.
So – ready to try a river cruise? You won’t be sorry. The ease of sightseeing and the ability to get to know your fellow passengers – along with lovely, sparkly new ships – are what make this segment of cruise travel so unbelievably hot these days.
