Some conclusions from our trip

Pros:
- Price- still impossible to beat.
- Tour Director and Activity Director - Great personalities - very nice guys
- Food - excellent - not much different than the very high priced lines. All the beer and wine you want for dinner. None at lunch but who needs booze at lunch? Of course, you can always buy it on board at any time. And there were plenty who did! Felt like all we were doing was eating!
- Most tours were excellent outside of the rather messed up Utrecht boat canal ride
This trip had a lot of bus touring off of the boat. Some days we were sailing for a few hours where you could get up on the deck and enjoy the sunshine. No castles along this stretch of the river, so Gate1 probably decided that spending time on the river wasn’t so essential
- Staff was super pleasant - all smiles all the time. I’m sure they’re trained to do this as it will help garner them more tips. Our dining server from Serbia was particularly nice as was our room attendant from Kyrgyzstan. She even hung out in the hallway talking with guests about her country
- Weather - incredible. Sunny almost every day - no rain. Before leaving it looked like we would have a lot of rain. Nothing of the sort. Of course this drove all the Dutch folks out of their homes and cities like Amsterdam were crazy busy with people.

Cons:
- Getting Covid.
- Wifi on board was horrible. Gate1 needs to fix that although maybe they just use “wifi” as a selling point, knowing it is worthless. Keeps people off of their phones and paying attention to what is going on around them. I’m cool with that and if it weren’t for trying to blog, it would be fine.
- Room size was comparable to the sizes of the lower deck rooms on Ama Waterways. Mattress was way too soft and I worried about my back, but it didn’t really cause an issue - go figure.
- We had an extremely small room in the Eden Hotel in Amsterdam. Others in the group had larger rooms. Don’t know why. Not a huge issue, but would have been nice to have more room. Heck, we had more room on the ship!
- These are all minor quibbles though. Overall, great adventure until Paris.

What would we do differently?
Without a doubt fly in a couple days early and rest for the first day. Trying to cheap out too much can cost you in energy. Also think I’d fly out a few days later at the end of the trip. Of course cost of hotel rooms as add ons can get expensive, but there is the option of staying in an AirBnB, hostel or whatever. Amsterdam was not cheap though. Meals were expensive too. We may be at the end of our river cruising days for a bit. We’ve done the Danube, the Rhone, the waterways of Bordeaux, the waterways of the Netherlands and Belgium. (The Rhine , which I’ve done in the past would be nice for Janet because of the castles - might still do that one). I’m inclined to think about going back to rental car or possibly train travel. In terms of covid, rental car would be best, but that wouldn’t be the biggest determinant. I think we got unlucky and maybe were both so tired from jet lag, etc that our immune defenses were down some and that was just enough to catch it from people you were around all week and sitting across the table from each other gabbing. Still, when Gate1 throws out these incredible specials, it’s hard not to jump on them - it’s why we chose this one. So my advice to those looking for a river cruise - consider Gate1 - it will cost you probably half of the others and the quality will be much the same as the more expensive ones. Now if you’re loaded and you usually hang with fellow loaded folks, then you might be more comfortable on the high end ships vs mingling with the peasants. :).

Technology issues worked out well - brought an extension strip I didn’t need, so that one will stay at home next time. Otherwise, bought the right stuff. T-Mobile worked like a champ - just automatic - nothing to turn on - it recognized you when you crossed into another country and you didn’t have to do a thing and 5GB of high speed data for free and you could buy more if you needed it. You just have to understand that you don’t post stuff on social media, etc without wifi. Since we didn’t have wifi for all extensive purposes on the ship, you pretty much had to wait till you wandered into a coffee shop and could grab 5 minutes or so on their wifi. Simple texting was fine - you could do that about anywhere with a decent cellular signal (which also wasn’t good on the ship).

When calculating your costs for a trip, don’t forget tipping. Pretty much better figure on 3-400 dollars.

Oh, and a final tip from Bart (our tour director) - if you plan to wear shoes when you leave the ship or the hotel, then take one of your shoes and put it on top of the safe in your room, then you'll remember to put on your shoe and take your passport with you!! :). (that's Bart and Janet on our final day in Paris. Bart had just smuggled us some coffee out of the dining room since the hotel didn't want us going in there). :)Read more