You're about to discover the important differences you need to know between a
European river cruise and a European barge hotel cruise.
I'm Gary Bembridge, and this is another of my tips for travellers. I'm just back from
a barge cruise through the waterways of France, and I thought would be a great
opportunity to talk about the differences between going on a river
cruise in Europe or going on a barge cruise through Europe. The first key
difference is around the type of waterways, and the range of options
available to you. 95 % of barge cruises go on man-made
canals rather than rivers. These are canals that were built, largely in the
18th century before railways were widespread, to move goods around a
country. Most of the barge cruises that you look at in Europe will go on
canals, although some of them do go on rivers. For example, I was on the CroisiEurope
Deborah barge on the Yonne and Seine Rivers because the water levels
were too low in the canal. So, we did more of a barge river cruise, but
you'll normally find that 95% of the cruises on a barge will be on canals. The
barges travel much less distance, so while on a river cruise you could go through
four or five countries and travel hundreds of miles, a barge is very
different. It will only travel around 50 to 70 miles, for example we did about 76
miles on our trip over six nights. Barges go much slower, and cover much less
ground, unlike a river cruise where you can go through multiple countries in the
space of a week. The range of places you can go to is much more limited than on a
river cruise. River cruises are available on pretty much every river of any
note in Europe, but barges go where
there are canals. So, you'll find them in much fewer places.
For example, there's a lot of them in France, you will find them in England,
Scotland and Ireland, and you'll also find more limited ones
in other parts of Europe like Holland and Belgium.
The second key difference between a barge and a river cruise in Europe is
the amount of options and choice. On a river cruise you have a huge amount of
cruise lines, ranging from very premium to more value.
You have a huge amount of rivers you can choose from, and there are loads of
permutations of itineraries. However, when it comes to barges you're going to have
much less choice. There's very few operators of barge cruises in Europe.
I went on CroisiEurope, and there's probably only two or three other
real players if you want to go on a barge cruise.
There's much less choice. A river cruise offers you a huge
option of different lines, lots of different rivers, lots of different
itineraries and multiple countries you can go to. if you choose to go on a barge
cruise you're going to have much less choice of both lines and countries that
you can go to on a barge cruise versus a river. The third, and probably one of the
biggest differences, between a river and a barge cruise in Europe is the pace. A
river cruise can be pretty frantic, and certainly one things I discovered when I
started river cruising is it's a much more full-on trip. You get up
early, you have breakfast, you go excursions, you come and you might
cruise a little bit and then they'll have another excursion, then you'll have dinner,
some entertainment and a have briefing, and it is pretty full on. A barge
however slows that down completely, and that's for a couple of reasons. First of
all, the barges go much slower and cover much less distance,
and importantly barges do not cruise at night. They only cruise during the
daylight hours. What normally happens is you'll have half a day of excursions
and half a day of cruising, and then you'll be docked somewhere at night. So,
straight away the whole pace slows down because half of the day you will spend
on the barge just relaxing as you sail through the
landscape that you're going through. The barges themselves do go much slower.
For me the next one is probably the most obvious of all of them, and that's about
the size of the ship. A river cruise can hold between 120 up to 200 guests.
Barges are much smaller, so for example, the Deborah barge that I was on
had a maximum of 22 guests. It's dramatically smaller. You have six crew
on board, so we had the captain, a sort of
first mate who helps the captain, a cruise director,
waitress, a chef and a housekeeper. The crew:passenger
ratio is very high on a barge.As the ships is much smaller,
you have much less facilities than you would have even on a river cruise, which
again is pretty limited. On the barge, for example, you
normally have the cabins on the lower level, ten of the eleven cabins on
Deborah were on the lower level. On the main level you have a dining room,
a seating area sort of a lounge which has a little bar, then outside you have
an open deck, which on Deborah had a hot tub as many of the barges do.
You also have an upper level, although often
the upper level is closed when cruising along canals as
the bridges tend to be pretty low on many of the canals around
Europe. The facilities are much less, and you're not going to have a choice of dining,
a fitness centre or a spa. Some river
cruise ships even have swimming pools, but you're not going to find any of that on a barge.
Not surprisingly, because of the nature of the waterways that barges cruise on,
it's a much smaller vessel. The next key difference is linked to that and let's talk
about the cabins themselves. On a river cruise, many ships
give you a huge choice including suites, balcony
cabins and then you can have cabins which you only have water views which
normally tend to be slightly below the water level. You have a wide range of
cabins and while the cabins on river cruise boats are still quite
small but are quite spacious, however on a barge your bedroom really
is a place to sleep and get ready. The cabins are pretty small so again we'll
just take an example of the one I had on Deborah where there were two single beds,
lots of storage space very cleverly put in above the bed,
a little seating area with a dressing table area and a bathroom. The
bathroom was a shower room. The cabins are pretty small, and it's not a
place that you're really going to want to necessary spend a lot of time in. That's
important because you spend half the day cruising and the cabins
themselves are actually below the water level, about
2/3 or 3/4 of them are below the water level, and when you are
cruising along they can be relatively noisy ( in my view), so it's not sort of
place you're likely to want to spend a lot of time in. Certainly one of the key
differences is you can have cabins that you might want to relax and spend time in on
a river cruise, but on a barge it's a much more practical sleeping and getting
ready space. The next key difference is around food and drink. On river cruises
you have incredible food with large menus and on some you have choice of dining
venues with lots of choice. It's different on a barge cruise. The
food on a barge cruise is impressive and gourmet like,
the meals are big and long and really they do go to town! Let me give
an example of what we had on the CroisiEurope Deborah, which is pretty typical
of other barge cruises that you could go on. Breakfast would be the most
informal of all the meals and that would be a buffet breakfast, so you'd have
pastries, cereal, yogurt, fruit and that kind of thing and then normally
there'd be an egg of the day like scrambled eggs one day,
omelet another. It was a buffet style breakfast. Lunch was probably the main
meal of the day, and a lot was made of lunch. It would be a four-course meal with
starter, main course and then, being France, you would
have a cheese course and every day two different cheeses were introduced we'd
be told the story of the cheese, and then there'd be a
dessert. In the evening it would be a three-course meal of starter, main course
and dessert. An important thing to note is this is a set menu. There are not
choices and options. If you have dietary issues like you're vegetarian, vegan
gluten-free or whatever, it is very importantly when you make the booking
that you work with the company you're going with to ensure that they know that
you have dietary issues, and when you get on board make sure that the chef knows.
The chef can be pretty flexible because they do buy a lot of stuff along
the way, but you're not going to have a big choice of menu. On river cruises
you'll have choices of starters, main courses and desserts, but normally
that's not the case on a barge cruise. Food quality is very high.
What's importantly on barges is your drink is included.
All of your drink is included on a barge cruise.
The next key difference is around fares. River cruise and barge fares are largely
all-inclusive. On river cruises lines it differs a little bit about what and is
and isn't included. Let me talk a little bit about what a barge cruise will
normally include. If I take the example again of the cruise I was on,
transfers to and from Paris were included, on barge cruises transfers are normally
included, your accommodation, your food and your drink as I've already discussed
are all included, Wi-Fi is included, excursions are included and depending on
the cruise line you are gratuities are either included or not included. On
CroisiEurope Deborah gratuities were not included, so the only extra expense
during that whole week that I was on were the gratuities - everything else was
included. My first barge cruise was a great experience and those differences
that I found were quite intriguing between that and river cruising. River
cruising is fantastic and definitely barge cruising is fantastic. I hope you found
those differences between River and barge cruising helpful and interesting. If
you want to find out much more, I have loads of videos about cruising river
cruising and barge cruising so why don't you watch another one of them right now?