By Samson Mandez

As for many travelers, the idea of a cruise vacations may automatically conjure images of equatorial islands and cocktails sipped on the deck from a big oceangoing vessel. While this is a big component of cruises, there is a little-known alternative that is bound to delight you: European river travel.

Regardless of whether you are new to cruising on ships or if it is an activity you have indulged in often, one advantage of European river travel is that it’s an activity that you can enjoy in every season, unlike tropical cruises.

Plus, with European river travel you will be able to visit many magnificent but little known places and sights, mostly inaccessible even to a standard Atlantic or Mediterranean cruise, while avoiding automotive traffic, airports, and big tourist crowds.

Most European river travel will involve visiting beautiful cities such as Vienna, Regensburg or Strasbourg, but you will also have a chance to sample nature’s delights in beautiful protected parks, and if you like mountains, the Alps and the Carpathians could only be a day trip away from your cruise boat!

There are lots of options for European river travel, both for the busy traveler who just needs a relaxing add-on to an existing trip, and to the leisured voyager who can take off weeks at a time to cruise at a slow pace. While self-catering options with small boats are available most river cruise ships on Europe’s rivers are outright floating hotels.

If you want to go the full way, the best trip that you can go on is a one-month voyage across the continent’s main rivers, the Rhine and the Danube, which are connected by canals in southern Germany. With this kind of trip, European river travel will take you all the way from Holland to the Black Sea.

There will be plenty to see on such a trip, from the magical shores of the Black Forest to the enchanting frontier area between France and Germany, to splendid cities such as Vienna, the ancient capital of the Habsburg Empire that used to stretch across all of middle Europe.

If you are already accustomed to cruises on big liners, you will be pleasantly surprised by the pace and also at the level of personal attention that the ship crew will be able to give you on European river travel. As the groups of passengers are smaller, much more will be done to make sure that you will feel individually well cared for.

The region truly has a lot to offer to the discerning traveler who likes to enjoy refined culture, entertainment, and cuisine at a pleasant pace. And in fact, maybe after such a momentous trip you may even decide to come back for more European river travel on the continent’s other rivers.

Whether you want to find the right European cruise for each season or buy an external flashlight, here is the place to start: EuroRiverTravel.com covers all your European river travel needs, with tips and information.

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