River cruising

Cabin, doesn't matter which side of the boat, there are interesting sites on both sides and always the upperdeck. The excursions are after breakfast and after lunch. Some of the excursions are difficult for some, but the upper age seems to be 85 and the youngest 60.

We did a Rhine cruise with Saga for our 40th anniversary. Small ship - had about 120 passengers on board so you knew everyone at least by sight. Thoroughly enjoyed it, our first attempt at cruising as I'm not a great lover of being on water. We didn't have to dress up unless we wanted to so we didn't. I tend to go for black trousers, a strappy summer top and an overshirt or light jacket to dress it up a bit. Husband took a jacket but didn't wear it.
The only "problem" we found was the vast quantity of food on offer - you could have 4 courses for breakfast, lunch and dinner and afternoon tea and late night supper if you wanted it ( a bit like Hobbits)! It's very easy to put on half a stone in weight in 2 weeks.
We loved seeing different places without having to live out of a suitcase. We've been on 2 sea cruises since so it certainly didn't put us off.

I did my first river cruise with Viking in May last year - fantastic trip on the Danube, Budapest to Passau. Regarding dress code it was stated as smart casual but I have to say a few of the mainly Americans (95%) on board totally disregarded this and used to turn up for dinner in shorts and flip flops, but it was the wearing of hats/caps at the dinner table that really used to wind me up! Anyway, that aside I found every aspect of the cruise absolutely brilliant and have never felt so pampered in my life. I thought the food was outstanding and yes, very easy to overeat. I thoroughly enjoyed the regional food, in particular the Taste of Austria evening. The included daily tours were wonderful and the local guides were brilliant. I was a single traveller but soon made friends with a mix of other passengers. I think river cruises are great as by their very nature there are not hundreds or even thousands of passengers.

Wow thank you all for this! We have booked our first ever river cruise for this April and it suddenly occurred yesterday to me that there may be a dress code and now you have all put my mind at rest! I will relax and enjoy it ?

The gratuity bit is tiresome. We devised our own scheme.

The Aussies on our river cruises don't tip nor were they expected to. However, the Americans just expected to and were absolutely ripped off as far as we could see. Us Brits seemed to be offered more discretion. We drew our own conclusions.

I river cruised with 'Avalon' a fantastic experience from aAmsterdam cruising the Rhine and Danube , only 6 Brits on board remainder , mainly American And Australian, it was a retirement ' Gift ' for my widowed friend on her retirement, and she asked me too go with
her , the experience was amazing , great service. Great food, and we as you wondered about Dress, but smart casual was all that was needed , just enjoy xx

We have done a few cruises with Riviera and can highly recommend them. All British passengers - you might like that or not - smart casual in the evening, sparkly top for the Captains dinner, good food, drinks are not free and tipping is at your discretion. The staff are great, often Eastern European and the passengers aged 60 upwards.

We found Viking were not exclusively seniors. We even had a young honeymoon couple on one!, but they are not for children certainly. As regards tipping, a few years ago Viking started giving out a separate envelope for the cruise host person. If you think about it, if everyone put something in that, then that person would walk off with thousands every week, at the expense of the galley maid who works just as hard. So we usually discard that envelope. On the trips we have done, the gratuity is in an anonymous envelope. we find the Americans want to know exactly how much a day they should put in, whilst the Brits seem to want to put a meaningful amount that reflects the wonderful service, but won't be dictated to by the company! We usually give a separate note to our cabin maid and maybe a favourite waiter who has been on hand all week to fill DH's glass up, lol. The good thing is that on cashless cruises, you don't have to worry about tipping all the time, unless you want to give a coin to the guide or bus driver etc.

VRC are not exclusively seniors, 95% seniors. The gratuity on VRC; envelopes are passed out with a reminder noting VRC suggested tip scheme. We tip as we feel inclined, to our chamber maid and servers in the area where we dine, totaling 5-7% of the overall cruise expense. The crew tends Eastern European, thus tips are a lovely way to give back.

We have had experience of Riviera Travel Viking RT and CroisiEurope . For the last one we booked through a UK travel company and did not realise we , English speakers , would be in the minorty . We found ourselves with about a dozen Brits and load of very noisy Spaniards . On one trip we did and paid for there was no English translation at all all day . The two ladies we had gone on the trip with kicked up such a fuss about it when we got back to the ship that the purser returned all our money for the day . We found that buying a bottle of water at dinner was more expensive than beer but you were allowed to take you bottle to you cabin . We just bought large bottles of water onshore and refilled our bottle to take back to the dining room.
I would say Viking were a posher set than Riviera travel but both were great for the cruises we did . I love river cruising and no need to dress up . The Danube Rhine and Seine were all spectacular cruises .We met some lovely people and I have fond memories of them still . One chap was 90 and had been the assistant director on the Dambusters film .

Many many thanks for all your helpful information, and I'm glad that it's not only me who will have been helped out! Now I can go ahead and book our holiday with confidence, and my DH is very grateful too. I'll let you know how we get on, we should be away in May.

Hope you have fun. We did a river cruise up the Rhine and certainly didn't dress up- just smart casual.