percent increase in bookings over the past
year, but less frequented waterways in
Russia and China have experienced
immense increases as well. When I first
read this, I had to wonder: What was all
the fuss about?
With just a little investigating, I discovered
that river cruises do everything a ship with a,
well,
bulkier
profile can’t do: small-group
immersive experiences, entrance into hard-to-
reach ports of call, and cruising days packed
with cooking lessons, language classes, and
history lectures. This is, of course, in addition
to delectable gourmet restaurants, intimate
staterooms, an emphasis on casual wear
(leave those cocktail dresses and high heels at
Though sailing down the Savannah River
this way was certainly entertaining, I was
pretty sure that further river cruises were
not going to be part of my lifelong travel
bucket list.
Somewhere over the past few years,
however, river cruising went from being a
cheesy way to score cheap drinks, eat a lot
of buffet food, and dance to all the songs
you swore you’d never let anybody play at
your wedding (chicken dance, anyone?) to
being one of the world’s most unstoppable
travel trends. The numbers speak for
themselves:
The Telegraph
recently
reported that not only have already-
popular routes like the Danube seen a 41
s soon as the DJ passed
out the sombreros and
h a d e v e r y o n e l i n e -
dancing around the cabin,
my erstwhile boyfriend
decided that this was not going to be the
night he proposed to me. What he’d
imagined would be a romantic ferry ride
down the moonlit Savannah River turned
out to be an awful lot like an awkward
high-school dance. Confounded by how
badly he had miscalculated the atmosphere
of our river-cruise dinner, he let me, his
blissfully unaware fiancée-to-be, don a
beaded sombrero, dance around and eat
f r e s h s h r imp , and d r i nk a l o t o f
complimentary wine.
A
The Lowdown
22
enVoyage
Perspectives
