I had planned to stay in Thailand through May when I got a call from Joan. She shared that she was worried she’d taken on too much with a river cruise conference in the Netherlands, followed by a tulip cruise tour, and finally a tour of Savannah and Charleston. Since they were back to back over the course of three weeks, I agreed.

By the end of the phone call we’d decided I would take the Charleston and Savannah tour, and since she had an extra bed in her cruise cabins, I would go back to Oregon by way of the Netherlands. As it turns out, I also went by way of Finland. I was able to find a flight to Amsterdam from Hong Kong for only 35k miles, but since the partner airline was Finnair, I had to travel through Helsinki. Getting to Hong Kong from Bangkok was cheap and saved me 10,000 miles had I tried to book the whole trip from Bangkok using miles.

Joan and I reunited at the airport in Amsterdam, much like the first time we met in Mexico. It makes sense that two world travelers, neither with a home, would use airport terminals as their reception room. We hopped on a train from the airport and headed for our hotel. The main difference this time was that our hotel would be moving about the Netherlands.

It was the first time either of us had done one of the European river cruises. As part of her river cruise business, Joan booked a conference to learn about river cruising as well as a pre-conference cruise so we could experience it first hand. The biggest surprise was how much different it was than an ocean cruise.

My favorite first thing to do on an ocean cruise ship is to explore all the decks. When I stepped onto the Avalon Passion and asked the woman at the reception desk for a map, she pointed left and said, “that’s the front” and then right and said, “that’s the back”. It turns out she wasn’t being sarcastic at all.

Everything on the ship was on just two decks. In the front was a large lounge with windows on all sides and a bar in the middle. In the back was a similar but smaller lounge. The only other public spaces were the restaurant one floor below and the sun deck one floor above. Given that we were in the Netherlands in March, we wouldn’t be spending much time on the sun deck, though there was a small hot tub in the middle of it.

Another big difference between a river cruise ship and an ocean cruise ship is room size. Our modestly priced cabin had plenty of room to walk around the room and floor to ceiling windows. It was delightful to wake up to Europe passing by on our cruising days.

Our three day pre-conference cruise took us to three destinations to experience the Netherlands. The first was Nijmegen (pronounced Ny-may-hen). I took a walking tour of the town and learned that it had been almost completely destroyed by the U.S. during World War II. Apparently the Allied bombers got lost in the fog and instead of returning to the aircraft carrier fully loaded, dropped their payload on farmland. Unfortunately, it turns out what they thought was farmland was the town of Nijmegen.

The town was rebuilt and has all the charm of a stone European city. I looked in several vintage and cheese shops before grabbing a coffee to warm myself after walking in the cold rain for 2 hours. Joan had made the better choice for her excursion, sampling beer at a local brewery.

The next morning brought us to a collection of some of the Netherlands’ first windmills. Apparently the first to arrive, of the people who would later be known as Dutch, were not satisfied with the available land and decided to create their own. By constructing dikes and windmills to pump water out, they pushed the North sea back and created miles of farmland. We took a walking tour among the windmills and got to see one in operation.

Our next stop was Rotterdam. This city is much different than any other in the Netherlands as it is very modern. The main part of the city was destroyed by Germany during WWII and rather than rebuild it the same, the people decided to build it using modern architecture. I selected a bike tour around the city to see the buildings, particularly the train station, the food hall, and the cubed buildings. Joan chose instead to explore Dutch history, and visited a historic pottery studio.

The last day of the pre-cruise brought us back to Amsterdam, which at this point is my least favorite Dutch city. Perhaps it is because it is the one most visited by tourists. It was always packed and not by the most well behaved crowd, attracted by drugs and prostitution. If one gets outside the red light district, however, it is a beautiful historic city.

Fortunately, we did sign up for a couple tours that got us out of the city. One day I went on a bike ride through the dutch countryside that took us through tiny villages where we got to enjoy some famous dutch apple pie. Another tour brought us to a dairy where we got to take part in the cheese making process.

It was fun because we got to make the cheese curds that were placed into a mold for the next class. After we finished our work, we ate cheese made from the previous class.

What I love about river cruising is the daily excursions that involve either mental or physical exercise. The river cruises seem to cater to a more ambulatory demographic and aren’t geared towards lounging around at the bar and pool like their bigger ocean going cousins. Our ship even had bicycles that they’d unload at each stop and have waiting at the end of the gang plank so we could ride into town.

That’s another difference I noticed: the smaller river ships stopped right in the middle of town. If you weren’t a cyclist, you could simply walk off the ship and into the center of the city.

As part of the conference, several different companies brought their river ships to the docks so we could tour them. We were impressed at the different levels of luxury and were surprised that the one with the most prominent name actually had the poorest quality of ship. In the future, we will definitely book with one of the lesser known but higher quality brands.

As I reflected on our experience, I wondered how I would try to convince my friends what a unique experience it was. For most of them, their minds shut the minute I say the word cruise. I wonder if I instead led with: imagine traveling through Europe without re-packing your bag at every destination, without navigating through an airport, without sitting on a bus for hours, while enjoying first class food comfortably watching cities drift by before being dropped off downtown for a day of exploration. That is river cruising.