My Luciole French Canal Barge Cruise Review I Love Luciole! By Heidi Sarna Updated January 2026 Was it the first evening I fell for her? When the charming Luciole’s beauty was captured in a moonlit reflection in the Yonne River where she was moored, just below the...
Sweden's Göta Canal By Heidi Sarna. Updated March 2025 Our family summer trip aboard the historic 46-passenger M/S Juno, one of a trio of wonderful old small cruise boats belonging to Sweden's Göta Canal Steamship Company, was one of my favorite quirky cruises to...
Pandaw River Cruises Restarting By Heidi Sarna It feels like a lifetime ago that river cruising in Southeast Asia was up and running, thanks to the COVID pandemic that put a stop to leisure travel in spring 2020. And while parts of Europe, North America and the South...
Maine Windjammer Cruise aboard the J. & E. Riggin By Heidi Sarna Maine with its gorgeous forests, rocky coastline, thousands of offshore islands and harbors dotted with yachts and lobster pot buoys is considered by many to be one of the most beautiful sailing...
sponsored Windstar Tahiti Cruise Deals For decades, Windstar has been one of the most beloved small-ship cruise lines around. In fact, one of my first-small ship cruises ever was aboard the 148-passenger Wind Spirit with my husband in the late 90s, sailing a dreamy...
By Heidi, Ted, Jane & Ben Lyons. Updated June 2025 Barge cruises are often not well understood. Don't barges carry cargo? Well, originally the flat-bottomed boats were used for carrying freight, typically on canals and rivers, either under their own power or...
Rhine River Family Cruises By Heidi Sarna. Aug 2024 Update: The River Empress is no longer with Uniworld, but the line offers nearly identical Rhine River cruises to the one I took on similar river ships, including the aboard the 152-passenger SS Antoinette. By the...
Pandaw is Back! By Heidi Sarna. Dec 18, 20021 UDPATE We're thrilled to report that due to overwhelming support, Pandaw River Cruises is BACK! The recent "Tribute to Pandaw" we posted is now our "Celebration of Pandaw!" Here's the company statement below about the...
Alaska Small-Ship Cruising. By Heidi Sarna Over the weekend we had an e-chat with Todd Smith, president and founder of AdventureSmith Explorations, to get his insights on Canada’s recent ban of Alaska-bound cruise vessels over 100 passengers through February 2022....
Kerala Backwaters Cruise on the Vaikundam By Heidi Sarna. Updated March 2025 I've been on many small-ship cruises all over the world. But this one was different. India is a vast country with a diverse geography. There are soaring snow-capped mountains, dry dusty...
If you can imagine it, we’ve cruised it! With reviews, articles and destination overviews, we’ve got you covered.
Historic London Pubs Tour by Paige Okun If you have half day before or after your Thames River cruise and want a unique view of London culture, try Liquid History’s tour of historic London pubs. Pubs are an integral part of British life, with nearly 40,000 pubs in the...
By Stephanie Sack Stretching from the Canal du Midi in the south to the Canal du Nivernais in the north, the complex canal systems crisscrossing France are not just inland waterways — they are living artifacts of European history, once crucial for trade and industry...
By Paige Okun It was the first morning of our Greek island cruise. The sun rose over the Aegean Sea, and I was feeling relaxed and ready for a day of island hopping — until I reached for my phone and found it at 5% battery. I rifled through my backpack in panic. Then...
By Heidi Sarna With the handsome 166-passenger Star Clipper anchored off in the distance, as if posing for a postcard, we motored in one of the ship's tenders to Isla Iguana in Panama. It was one of the week's several wet landings. This meant we climbed out of the...
By Anne Kalosh AmaWaterways has just introduced AmaMagdalena, the first luxury vessel to sail Colombia’s Magdalena River. Cruises between Cartagena and Barranquilla include cultural highlights such as a private celebration of the world-famous Barranquilla Carnival, a...
By John Roberts, with Peter Knego and Heidi Sarna I have cruised with Sea Cloud Cruises twice now. These trips in the past two years follow my first time on a true windjammer when I cruised with Star Clippers a couple years ago in France. There is so much to enjoy on...
By John Roberts Sea Cloud Cruises placed its newest windjammer, Sea Cloud Spirit, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, for four January departures, sailing to serene destinations in the colorful Caribbean. This is a new program for Sea Cloud, and I joined one of the voyages for...
By Jackie Sheckler Finch Cruising the mighty Mississippi and its tributaries has been my pleasure since 1976. Someone asked me once if it doesn’t get tiresome watching the river day after day. For me, definitely not. As America’s first highway, the Mississippi River...
Sponsored Since its founding, St Lawrence Cruise Lines (SLCL) has been a company supported by both Americans and Canadians. “In light of the current environment, we have certainly had some calls from our American friends wondering if we are upset with them. That is...
By Jerrol Golden Let’s go! That’s what our guide, Fadi, says when it’s time to move on to the next location. The banks of the Nile River in Egypt contain some of the world’s most historic sites and we were there to learn as much as we could about the ancient...
Reviewer Aliza Knox from Singapore & Sydney. Cruise Line Mutiara Laut. Ship A classic Indonesian two-mast schooner, the 14-passenger Mutiara Laut. Destination Northern area of Raja Ampat, in West Papua, Indonesia. # of Nights 7. Departure Port Sorong Bay, West...
