Europe 2024 Cruising from Strasbourg to the Black Sea

MS L'Europe

Travel Dates 30th April to 20th May 2024

I have rarely posted trip reports in the past few years; I am afraid I got side-tracked by other things. I will begin again with my most recent trip.

Last May I spent three weeks on a river cruise from Strasbourg to Constanta on the Black Sea along the Rhine, Main and Danube rivers. I'll open with a report on the boat and the company.

I chose CroisiEurope for several reasons: their single supplement was less excessive than other river cruises and I was able to combine two cruises of 12 days from Strasbourg to Budapest followed by 9 days from Budapest to the Danube Delta. That became a seamless 21 day cruise. Another advantage was that all meals and most drinks were included but excursions were not. That kept the costs down by allowing me to choose the excursions I preferred without paying to visit towns I had seen previously.

I enjoyed the cruise but there were pros and cons. 

The Pros

The Cabin. My French Balcony cabins, initially double and later twin, had comfortable beds and reasonable space although the showers were very cramped.

Adults Only. I doubt there were any passengers under 30. As an old curmudgeon that suited me fine. I don't think it was an active company policy, just that the cruise activities were not designed for children or adolescents.

Excellent Food. The company promotes their culinary standard and I enjoyed most of the meals, even though as a diabetic I chose to leave some of the high-carb sides and desserts on the plate.

The smoke detectors appeared to be de-sensitised...

Celebrating a Birthday

Alcohol Included. The choices of wines and beers were limited but acceptable and ordinary spirits were included. Higher priced options were available for payment.

Staff.

• Navigation staff were excellent but rarely seen after initial introductions.
• Service staff were always polite and did their jobs well.
• Hospitality staff tried hard within limitations.

The Journey.

I loved watching the world pass by as we slowly and quietly cruised along the rivers. The many locks; changing landscapes; occasional ancient ruins on hills; wandering through small towns I had not been to before; coffee and snacks (and authentic gulyas) in little cafes; chatting to locals in mutually incomprehensible languages punctuated by lots of gestures and smiles; planning ways to use public transport in Strasbourg, Vienna and Budapest; etc etc. 

The Cons.

The pros, especially the journey, tend to outweigh all the cons for me. But I’ll list them anyway to help anyone considering a river cruise because some items could definitely do with improvement..

Language: CroisiEurope is a French company and advertises that all staff are bilingual speaking at least French and English, and some are multilingual. That may be true but only a small number of English speaking passengers were on board and we found that all announcements began with a long statement in French followed by a much briefer English version. This became worse when a large group from Brazil joined the second cruise and a long Portuguese announcement was added before the English version. On some excursions, possibly to save money, a bilingual guide was used in the same way: a long French description followed by a very short English version. That became very frustrating for all the English speakers. Some excursions had a dedicated English guide, but not all. 

Management Inflexibility. A couple of examples.

I had paid for an excursion to the Danube Delta when booking the trip. About ten days in I discovered by chance that we were no longer going to that region because of the proximity to the war in Ukraine and we were now going to Constanta, further south on the Black Sea. A wise decision but it would have been courteous to have been informed much earlier. I could not get approval from the ship's management to change excursions or obtain a refund. Eventually a change to the Constanta excursion required several emails back to my Australian booking agent who contacted CroisiEurope head office. 

I had worked out a method to reach Bucharest from our final port of Oltenitsa in Romania using a cab to the local rail station, train to an outer Bucharest suburb and another cab to the centre. At disembarkation I and several others found that buses had been arranged direct to Bucharest for several groups. There were plenty of vacant seats but when we asked if we could pay to join the buses we were told that was not possible as we should have booked those before the boat trip. Our less direct trip took several more hours than theirs.  

Laundry. There were absolutely no laundry facilities for passengers. Making life more difficult the sailing schedule from Strasbourg to Budapest rarely had us in a port near a laundrette long enough to do the job. I became aware of this after booking and bought a “travel clothesline” but doing this every few days became a pain. I even attempted unsuccessfully to bribe the housekeeping staff. After 11 days I found a nearby laundrette in Budapest. Joy! I washed everything except the clothes I was wearing. The second trip included some suitable ports with laundrettes. 

Entertainment. Two excellent musicians and vocalists were on board and performed during the complete trip. They were very good but I expected more variety to fill 21 days and nights on board. I had hoped for some form of local entertainment as we passed through many countries. Instead we only had one night, which was quite good, as we passed through Bulgaria. 

On other nights and some afternoons apart from the two musicians we had the sort of party games I would have expected in a retirement home. The hospitality staff tried hard but there is a limited amount of entertainment in repeated word games, name-that-town, name-that-song and similar games. Luckily I enjoy reading and had loaded enough books on my kindle app to fill my evenings. But it was disappointing.

Forward Lounge

In summary I quite enjoyed the cruise but the points I listed jarred a little. If I was planning it again I would probably look at a different operator.