Unpack Once: Seven River Cruises That Are Easy from the UK

You leave St Pancras after breakfast. Somewhere around lunch the flat green of the Low Countries starts sliding past the window, and by mid-afternoon you're on the deck of an AmaWaterways ship in Amsterdam with a drink in your hand, watching the light on the water.

No airport, no boarding pass, no transfer coach at the wrong end of a European city.

That's the bit of river cruising nobody from the UK talks about enough. We spend plenty of time on what happens once you're aboard and almost none on how little it takes to get there. Europe's great rivers are close from here, and some of them aren't even a flight.

Every voyage in this piece is an AmaWaterways itinerary.

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Why the River Works

River ships are small, and that's the whole point. Around 150 guests rather than a few thousand, tying up in the middle of towns the big ships can't reach.

You unpack once, and your hotel moves while you sleep. Some mornings you'll want the guided walk through the old quarter, and some mornings a coffee on deck with the banks going past is just as good.

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Holland & Belgium, Without Flying

Getting there: Eurostar from St Pancras, four hours, no changes.

Sail: Best of Holland & Belgium, round trip from Amsterdam.

That opening scene happens here, and it's the easiest trip on this list by a distance. One train from St Pancras, no changes, and the ship is waiting in the city you step out into.

Amsterdam is the obvious starting point, and we love it for that, but the week that follows leaves the obvious behind quickly. Utrecht's canals sit a storey below the street, with old wharf cellars that are now some of the best tables in the country. Ghent gives you the medieval quarter without the coach parties, and you'll have Bruges the next day anyway. Antwerp is the one that surprises people: a Rubens city, a diamond city, and quietly one of the best-dressed places in Europe.

Give yourself two nights in Amsterdam before you sail. The Nine Streets in the morning and Reguliersdwarsstraat in the evening if you want the city at its most welcoming.

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The Seine, and the Birth of Impressionism

Getting there: Eurostar to Paris in 2h15, or flights from London or Manchester.

Sail: Impressions of the Seine & Paris, Paris to Le Havre.

Most people sail the Seine round trip from Paris, and it's a lovely week. But there's a version we like even more, and it runs one way downstream to the coast.

It follows Impressionism in the order it happened. You start in Paris, where it was all argued over and thrown out of the salons, walk through Monet's garden at Giverny, and reach Rouen, where he painted the same cathedral front again and again to catch what the light did to it. You finish in Le Havre, the harbour he painted as 'Impression, Sunrise', the canvas that gave the whole movement its name.

Three nights in Paris first, always. And if you'd rather not fly at all, Eurostar puts you in the city in a little over two hours.

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Burgundy, Dijon to Lyon

Getting there: Eurostar to Paris, then TGV to Dijon, with transfers arranged. Or a short flight to Lyon.

Sail: Flavours of Burgundy, on the Saône.

The Saône isn't a river many people put on a list, and we'd like to change that, because it runs through the best eating and drinking in France.

You begin in Dijon, a proper city with a ducal palace and covered market halls designed by Gustave Eiffel, then head south through the Chalonnaise wine road, Tournus and its abbey, and Mâcon under the limestone ridges. You end in Lyon. If you've got one meal left in you, spend it in a bouchon in Vieux Lyon and order whatever the room is eating.

This is also the easiest one to do without flying. AmaWaterways runs it as a rail journey: Eurostar to Paris, the TGV down to Dijon, and someone meets you on the platform and takes you to the ship.

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Bordeaux, and the Two Rivers Above It

Getting there: Around two hours by air, or a same-day train from St Pancras via Paris.

Sail: Taste of Bordeaux, round trip from Bordeaux.

You probably know Bordeaux from the labels rather than the place, and the city is the part people underestimate. The riverfront has been cleaned and opened up, there's a tram along the quays and the Miroir d'Eau opposite the Place de la Bourse, and it's now one of the handsomest cities in France.

The sailing loops through the names you half know. Libourne puts you at the foot of Saint-Émilion, a limestone hill town with a church carved into the rock beneath it. Blaye has its citadel above the estuary, and Pauillac is the left bank and the great châteaux of the Médoc.

Stay on for two nights afterwards. Bordeaux eats far better than its reputation suggests, and you'll want an evening to prove it.

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The Moselle, Which We'd Take Over the Rhine

Getting there: A short flight to Luxembourg, home from Basel.

Sail: Rhine & Moselle Splendours, Luxembourg to Basel.

Everyone sails the Rhine, and with good reason. The castles are real, the gorge is dramatic, and it's the trip most people picture when they picture a river cruise.

But the Moselle is the prettier river. It's narrower and more twisting, with vineyards at angles that look impossible until you taste the Riesling they produce. This sailing gives you the Moselle first and the Rhine after, which is the right way round.

You start in Luxembourg, then in Cochem, where the castle sits on a cone of rock above the town like something from a children's book. Only then do you join the Rhine for the gorge, followed by Heidelberg, Strasbourg, and the Alsatian villages into Basel. Four countries in seven nights. Book it early, because not many ships can sail the Moselle.

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Medieval Germany, and the Christmas Markets

Getting there: A short flight to Basel, home from Nuremberg.

Sail: Medieval Treasures, Basel to Nuremberg.

Christmas market cruises are everywhere now, and most of them go to the same four cities. This one doesn't, and that's the reason we'd pick it.

The Main is a small river, and small rivers take you to small places. Miltenberg and Wertheim are half-timbered towns with a single main street each; Würzburg has the Residenz and its Tiepolo ceiling, and Rothenburg ob der Tauber sits entirely inside its own walls. Bamberg is the one we'd go back for: a UNESCO old town where the local beer is smoked over beechwood. Try it once and decide.

It ends in Nuremberg, and if you sail in December, the Christkindlesmarkt there is the one every other market is copying. Book the December departures a long way ahead; they go first every year.

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The Danube Nobody Has Done

Getting there: Around two and a half hours to Budapest, home from Bucharest.

Sail: Gems of Southeast Europe, Budapest to Giurgiu.

Budapest to Vienna is the most popular river cruise in the world, and it has earned that. If you haven't done it, do it. But if you have, there's another Danube going the other way, and almost nobody from the UK has been on it.

You still start with Budapest lit gold from the water. Then you keep going: Vukovar in Croatia, Belgrade, where the fortress sits above the meeting of two rivers and the nights run late, and then the Iron Gates, where the Danube squeezes through a gorge between the Carpathians and the Balkans with cliffs on both sides. Bulgaria follows, with Vidin's fortress and the cave churches at Ivanovo.

Five countries, and a part of Europe your friends almost certainly haven't seen. Add two nights in Bucharest at the end while you're there.

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Arriving by Train

If the ship is the holiday, there's a good case for making the journey out part of it too.

Eurostar Premier is the quiet upgrade nobody mentions: three bags, no weight limit, nothing to decant into a plastic bag, and a lounge at St Pancras. For a week of cruise wardrobe, that changes the whole morning.

AmaWaterways run their own rail journeys on several European sailings, Burgundy among them, with private transfers between the station and the ship, so you're met on the platform rather than left to work it out.

And if you want to arrive in style, the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express runs Paris to Vienna and Paris to Budapest on a handful of dates each year, and the Golden Eagle Danube Express begins and ends its journeys in those same two cities. For the Danube with no plane at all, the sleeper leaves Brussels in the evening, and you wake up in Vienna. Ask us and we'll put the pieces together.

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If You'll Fly a Little Further

Getting there: Overnight from Heathrow to Cape Town, home from Johannesburg.

Sail: Iconic Africa, fourteen nights, with three on the Chobe aboard the Zambezi Queen.

Everything above is about how little it takes to arrive. This one is the opposite, and we'd still put it on the list.

The Chobe holds the highest concentration of elephants anywhere on earth, and seeing it from a river ship changes everything. You're at eye level with the bank. The herds come down to drink in the late afternoon, and you're simply there, with no engine running and no line of vehicles behind you. Hippos surface a few metres off, and the birdlife will convert people who have never once cared about birds.

Around the river, the fortnight takes in Cape Town, Victoria Falls, Johannesburg and a safari in Kruger, so the three nights on the Chobe sit at the centre of something much bigger. It starts with three nights in Cape Town, which is exactly the right way to find your feet.

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Time & Place

River cruising suits a particular kind of week. You want to see a lot without moving much, you want to eat well, and you'd rather not spend two days of a seven-day holiday in transit.

From here, that's easier than most people realise. Some of these you can reach on a train from central London, and AmaWaterways arranges the flights and the transfers for the rest.

Tell us which week you have, and we'll tell you which river. Then let us plan your AmaWaterways river cruise: the ship, the suite, how you get there, and the days on either side.

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