7 Days on a Luxury River Cruise: An Inside Look at The Reality

I’ve recently a European river cruise on an ultra-luxurious cruise line which is the most expensive trip I’ve ever booked.

The average price of a cruise like this, in the cheapest room is around £500 ($650) per person per night. This is far more than I would usually spend.

I’m not sure what I was expecting from this cruise, but it certainly wasn’t this, we had a very eventful trip and I did things I will never forget.

In the past, I’ve taken river cruises with budget cruise lines and always had a great time.

I like to travel as cheaply as possible, so when I saw a sale for a very specific itinerary in July, I thought this was my chance to get onboard.

The cruise would normally cost double what I paid, and it’s very rare to find a deal like that, so I wanted to find out if it was really worth the price tag.

The cruise I booked was a roundtrip from Venice, and it’s safe to say I was more than a little nervous about travelling to this part of the world in the middle of summer.

I was expecting it to be very hot and very busy without any air conditioning, but I hoped that I would still be able to make the most out of the included excursions.

I didn’t know if I’d fit in on a cruise like this, and I wasn’t sure what to wear or what to expect day to day, but I was really excited to find out. 

Our cruise included flights from London and transfers to the cruise port. We were met at the airport by the Uniworld representative and taken to our ship, the SS La Venezia.

I knew that this ship had had a troubled past, so I was looking forward to seeing how she had been refitted. She was completely redesigned and had her name changed in 2020.

On the excursion bus, I noticed the first difference between this and the budget river cruise lines.

There were only 6 of us on the entire bus, which was really nice. If this was a budget line every seat would have been filled.

Even at 9 am, though, it was 30 degrees, which is 86 Fahrenheit. The bus had amazing air conditioning and the journey didn’t take long.

We had a very early flight, starting our day at around 4 am, but that did mean that we embarked on the cruise at 10 a.m., which is pretty unheard of.

It’s normal to embark around midday or the afternoon. The latest I’ve boarded a cruise was just after midnight, but this one at 10 a.m. has got to be the earliest.

We walked right into the central atrium area, and this area really had a wow factor for me.

I’m not sure if the word is excentric or bold – but I loved it. It did feel a bit weird being here in my supposedly sweat-proof practical outfit but I had packed lots of more fancy dresses to change into later.

Checking in was just like checking into a hotel; it couldn’t have been faster or easier. I’m sure the fact that only six of us were checking in at this time helped. 

They let us know that our cabins would be ready at around 3 pm and that we were free to enjoy the rest of the ship until then. 

I’d booked the cheapest cabin on the ship so was down on deck 1. My cabin was actually mostly under the waterline so I was looking forward to seeing that.

Like most river ships the SS La Venezia is made up of four decks, a sun deck, a middle deck with a lounge and restaurant on it and two lower decks which are mostly cabins.

Heading into the big lounge I loved the decor and the seating, it felt so bright and open and I definitely think luxurious.

The mirrors in the tables were so incredibly clean that this tricked me everytime into thinking there were two of things!

Drinks are included on a uniworld cruise so we decided to start, by ordering one. My dad had a beer even though it was 10 am, but in his defence, it was 11 am back at home.

We had been awake since 4 a.m., too. Plus, we were on holiday, and all the drinks were included. What else are you meant to do?

I’m always hesitant to say that ‘ALL’ of the drinks are included because theres is always the odd random extra cocktail or champagne that isn’t – but I never found anything I wanted that wasn’t included in the cruise fare.

I wondered if things like the included drinks and excursions would explain why this cruise costs two, three, or four times that of a budget river cruise, but only time would tell.

I did keep a tab of how much I would have ‘spent,’ and the outcome was quite surprising. More about that later.

I decided next to head to the toilet and this isn’t something that I would normally put in my video reviews but I do think you can tell a lot about a ship from its public bathrooms and these were amazing.

I was a little confused about the placement of the mirror, it was really weird to be able to just look at yourself from above while on the loo – but if thats what luxury is about I’ll go with it.

Onboard the ship at this time was an interesting mix of people waiting to leave the last cruise and those who had boarded for the next cruise.

The crew seemed to know who everybody was, and that is definitely a benefit of a smaller ship with a very high crew-to-passenger ratio. 

More and more guests were arriving throughout the morning and at mid day it was time for lunch, I was so excited at this point. I knew that it would a buffet lunch but I wasn’t really sure how you could make a buffet particularly luxurious? 

I did find out though. We headed to the main dining room and while we were walking along the corridor I had a sneaky peak look into some of the cabins that were cleaned and ready.

It’s human nature to want to look into open doors, I think, just to make sure there isn’t a tiger hiding there that’ll pounce on you. 

I honestly was a bit lost for words when I saw these cabins, Uniworld describe them as ‘nostalgic and elegant’ and I’ve certainly never seen patterns quite like it.

The majority of cabins onboard are what they call balcony cabins but they’re more of a siding door than an outside balcony, there are a few suites in the middle too and the cheapest oceanview cabins down on the bottom level which is where I would be. I was so looking forward to seeing if my cabin looked like this.

The buffet lunch was great, the bread was amazing, the fruit was fresh and there was a lot of choice considering that there weren’t really many of us there.

I’d find out later that there were 97 guests on this cruise and 46 crew members, so me and my Dad pretty much had own our designated crew member.

Not literally, of course. You don’t have one person who is cooking for you, then cleaning your room, etc, but you get the idea. 

There is no fixed seating on Uniworld river cruises so you just show up and find a seat which worked really well, almost always.

I say almost always because there was one lady onboard who was cruising solo. She didn’t want to sit with anybody else, and also didn’t like the location of any of the tables for 2, so she wanted a table for 4 for herself. Of course, they don’t have the space to do that.

The staff were absolutely fantastic and so accommodating but you’re always going to find the odd one person who likes to make life awkward, but the crew were so patient.

It was around now that I made an amazing discovery, down on deck 2 there was a place to get water, tea and coffee and here I found two jars which were always filled with the most amazing cookies.

They must have been made onboard because they were always so fresh and great, when we came back from our excursions we would stop off here on our way to our cabin.

We didn’t have an official excursion this first day because guests were boarding at all times but when we went to our cabin we did find this schedule of all the excursions on the cruise.

I find it so helpful to see everything written down like this, and I noticed that we had a lot of early morning starts and even some excursions in the evenings. Given the intense heat, that did make a lot of sense, but still, I’m not an early bird.

We had a little bit of time before we had to go to the safety drill so we decided to brave a little walk around Venice.

I knew that Uniworld actually do private access tours, so we would be visiting places before they opened and after they closed – which was amazing.

Despite the heat it was great to get to have a little look around, it made me very excited about the week. Even though we were on a river cruise we really weren’t going to be cruising very much, we only docked in three places during the week and never sailed over night.

On some river cruises you can be sailing for full days but the most sailing on this itinerary was a couple of hours at a time, it felt more like a floating all-inclusive hotel and I was hoping to not spend anything extra actually on the ship. 

Heading back inside, we decided to spend some time on the top deck. It was here that we actually watched a Gondola race, which was so much fun.

There were always so many boats sailing by here, and they all seemed to know what to do to make sure that they never bumped into each other.

There really didn’t seem to be much logic to it, but whatever they were doing, it worked.

On the top deck were these sun loungers with a part to protect your face from the sun which I really think all sun loungers should have and also loads of these really comfortable seats, they were more like outdoor sofas. 

We also found a restaurant up here which was a pizzeria and I was hoping that we would get to try that during our cruise.

Unfortunately we didn’t because they never opened it, because it was too hot. I did find that a bit weird given that this ship is here all year round and has been for decades – so the hot Italian summer isn’t exactly a surprise.

I hoped that the heat wouldn’t mean that we would miss out on more things. They did bring some pizza down to the buffet a couple of days. 

Towards the back was a seating area where the crew would often have their breaks. The crew on river ships work from the start of the season in spring all the way through until autumn. They live onboard and do get time off, but they pretty much work all the time.

The crew’s cabins are down near my cabin but are much smaller, and most of the crew do have to share a room looking at this deck plan. 

I noticed that there wasn’t a pool up here and I really did think that was a shame, it’s quite common for river cruise ships to have a small pool on the top or inside but there wasn’t one anywhere on this ship.

Even a cheap paddling pool or splash area would have been nice, just somewhere to cool off when it was so hot, which it always was.

At this point, I fell asleep on one of the sofas, and that wouldn’t be the last time! They were very comfortable. 

At the safety drill in the main lounge they told us a little bit about the plan for the next day, there was an early morning excursion and another in the evening, because of this we would have our ‘welcome onboard’ chat and drink on what was effectively day three. 

Knowing that I had a very early start the next morning and had been up since 4 am, I didn’t stay awake very long after dinner.

It was a shame that the beds don’t split apart at all in the cabins as I was cruising with my Dad, but I just slept upside down, and my Dad said I kicked him in the head at one point. Sorry about that Dad. 

Our excursion left the ship at 7:45 am and we headed to a boat that would take us to the Doges palace. We had a pre opening tour which meant that we got to have a look around without the crowds, I’m so glad that we did.

It was so strange to be there while they were still cleaning, but we learnt a lot about the history of Venice and the Doges.

The Doge’s are basically the people who were in charge of Venice and they used to run the city from this building, it has courts and even prison cells which were very very hot even at 8 am.

They certainly didn’t have air conditioning back in 1340, and to preserve the building, none has been added.

I really struggled with the heat, and not just because I’m from the UK. There were people from California on our tour who said that the humidity made this unbearable for them, too.

The walls were lined with dark tapestries and it was like being in a sauna. I’m honestly not sure that I’d recommend a visit to Venice in July to anybody, but I hoped that it wouldn’t be like this all day everyday, or I wouldn’t last very long.

At one point my phone just said the humidity was 100, which I’ve never seen before.

I’m so glad that I bought my own bottle with me because the Uniworld bottles they gave out in the cabins were so tiny, around 400ml, and that is not enough for a 3 or 4-hour excursion in this heat.

I think they missed a trick there by not selling a big litre or more bottle onboard, we’d all have bought it! 

Heading back to the ship and into the air conditioning of our cabin was incredible. I’ve never appreciated it more. I had a shower and would end up showering and changing multiple times every single day. 

If you’d like a representation of how hot it was, this is what happened to the chocolate bar that was in my bag, this is what I felt like inside. 

After another yummy buffet lunch the ship set sail but not for a new destination, we were doing what was called a scenic sail where we sailed up and down the lagoon. 

I’ve never been on a cruise where we’ve sailed back to the start so soon, but it was lovely. We found a seat at the front of the ship where there was another seating area, here we could see the crew on the bridge and watch the world go by. 

Tomorrow, we would be sailing for a new destination, and we had decisions to make about our upcoming excursions.

We went to a presentation in the main lounge and made our choices, my Dad is a keen cyclist and we’ve actually been on cycling cruises before so he of course wanted to do the cycling tour and I decided I’d try to do it too.

Find out about the cycling Barge and Bike cruise I took with my Dad previously, here:

I wasn’t sure how I’d find cycling in this heat, given that I wasn’t even very good at just standing in it but I hoped it would be okay. I wasn’t prepared for how it actually went, but the problem really wasn’t the heat. 

The great thing about a river cruise is that they can be very flexible with things. Because there was an evening excursion heading off over dinner time, they decided to do a buffet dinner so that everybody would be finished earlier.

They did the same the next day when me and my Dad decided to skip a mid-day excursion. There were only 5 of us left on the ship, so they of course didn’t want to put on a full buffet. Instead, they offered us a three-course meal. The service couldn’t have been better. 

Even though excursions are included, that doesn’t mean that they are mandatory, we skipped a few and often did our own thing just wandering off in the ports.

We were each given a cruise card like this and we could tap ourself on and off the ship, this is so that they know if anybody is left out on land. I liked how this told us how many people were on and off the ship, I wish that happened on all cruises. 

The next place that we would visit on this cruise was an Island called Burano, it’s famous for its coloured streets and I see why.

We took part in the included walking excursion and then came back again the next morning before the shops opened. It seems most people were there for the shops, because there was almost nobody around when we visited early in the morning.

During our included excursions we used a little box called a vox box, the guide has one of these that they speak into and then their voice comes out the headphones.

This is pretty standard on river cruises and when I took a budget river cruise with the line TUI, half our group got stuck behind a door that we needed a pass to go through, we could hear our guide saying things like ‘where are they??’ ‘I hope they’ll come soon’ and we were there just stuck, she did come back for us thankfully!

Learn more about that very budget river cruise here:

At this point, believe it or not, we actually hadn’t seen all of the ship. We set off on a mission to check out the gym, the laundry and the spa.

The gym had the most amazing views and a couple of machines, considering that it is a small ship I thought that this was a great size and I did see people using this fairly often. 

The spa was really just a room for massages and somebody was in there when I went by so you’ll have to use your imagination, I’m sure you can imagine a room with a bed in it..

The laundry was located down by my cabin and was completely free to use which is great, towards the end of the cruise I did notice more people using this and given how hot it was and how often we had to change our clothes, I bet these machines were working all the time.

On the level above the laundry there was a speciality restaurant, I never saw anybody in here or heard it mentioned so it really wasn’t a space I used.

Looking into the history of the ship, I found out that this area used to be a seating area, and I would have preferred that.

I liked the changes in the main dining room and the lounge but when it comes to this bit – and also I think the cabins to be honest – I prefer the original design. 

The design of the cabin isn’t one I’ll ever forget but it did clash a little but with my 70s night outfit!

I don’t normally take part too much in themed nights but Uniworld were fantastic in that they emailed us to let us know about the theme weeks in advance. I’ve been on so many cruises where I had no idea there would be a certain night and then all of a sudden its white night and I only have a red dress.

Me and my Dad decided to wear matching outfits, and theres always the fear at something like this that you’ll be the only people dressed up, but we absolutely were not.

We were the first people dressed up to go to the lounge, so that was nerve-wracking for a few seconds, but there were so many people wearing the most amazing outfits.

Nobody needed encouraging onto the dance floor everybody just took up their spaces and danced the night away, at no point did anybody try to make me get up and dance or force me to participate – so that was perfect.

It was so fun to watch everybody having fun. This was the main theme night of the cruise. We also had a singer one night and opera another night but cruises like this really aren’t about the onboard entertainment, after all you are literally in Venice and given the heat the evenings were the perfect time to wander around.

I did enjoy watching the lounge camera from my cabin, I have no idea why this is even a thing but I’d use it to check if everybody was in the lounge yet or not. 

Everyday before dinner we did have a little presentation which was very useful, they’d tell us about the next days schedule and our excursions.

River cruises are a bit more regimented than ocean cruises, but I found myself settling into the routine very well, they’d give us little snacks at the pre dinner talk too that probably helped.

Dinner was also at 7 pm which is pretty late for me so by the time it was over I really didn’t need a lot of entertaining, a quick drink, another shower and bed was perfect. 

To have a look at everything I ate on this Uniworld River Cruise, read this article next:

Here’s Everything I Ate on a Luxury River Cruise (Main Meals, Buffet and More)

Sitting on the top deck as we sailed away from Burano was the best, this for me is what river cruising is all about.

It’s so silent and calm, we did actually feel more movement on this ship than I ever have on a river ship before, but that was just when we were in the first port because there was so much traffic on the river. When a big ship went by it would make us rock, not much they can do about that though. It wasn’t a problem and never made me feel unwell, just reminded me that I was on a boat. 

The waiters would usually hand out a cocktail on the top deck, a kind of sail-away special, and I always tried them when they were offered. Apart from that I mostly drank Coke Zero and by the end of the cruise I didn’t even have to ask anymore, they’d often just bring my drink like magic.

How the waiters remember everybodies drinks I’ll never know, I guess mine is quite straightforward but I did hear people with much more complicated orders, it never seemed a problem.

I’m pretty sure if I said my favourite drink was a drink that didn’t even exist they would try their best to make it. 

We headed to dinner in the main dining room and chose from the menu of starters, soups, mains and desserts.

Vegetarian dishes were clearly marked and I heard a number of people talking to the staff about allergies and intolerances. The great thing about a river cruise is that the chefs can really get to know you and they can be a lot more flexible than on the big cruise ships. 

The food was always good and the bread was amazing, it might seem like a small thing but honestly the bread, fan-tastic. For the price of the cruise I would expect it to be but still I never take good bread for granted.

While I was distracted by the bread we docked in our next port of Chioggia (Said key-og-a). This was where I had booked the cycling tour for so I was a little bit nervous about that.

By cruise ship standards, the Azamara cruise ships are actually pretty small, but from the top deck of the SS La Venezia, which is deck 4, she seemed massive.

The ship was docked there overnight and we watched her sail away the next day. 

When she sailed away I got to take part in one of my favourite cruise ship things, waving.

It might sound silly but I just love how people who are sailing away on a cruise ship wave, I love finding somebody and waving at them and doing everything I can to get them to wave back, something about it is just so fun to me.

I knew somebody who was onboard the ship so that made it even better. When they left we were left alone in Chioggia.

We headed off on our included excursion which was a boat tour, this was the most relaxing excursion we had and because we were out far away from the concrete and the buildings it didn’t feel too hot at all. Even the toilet on this boat had a lovely view. 

The boat tour was very much what I expected but the cycling excursion wasn’t.

When we originally signed up for it it said a maximum group size of 20 but we had almost double that number. I’m glad that they let everybody who wanted to cycle, cycle – but the size definitely did cause some problems.

I was expecting us to be cycling along the water to the beach, but the majority of the cycling was across town on roads and roundabouts. I had no idea the rules about how to cycle on Italian roads, and it felt as if we were very much taking our life in our hands.

I don’t think anybody was following the rules. I consider myself a fairly confident cyclist. I’ve taken full cruises where you cycle every single day, but none have felt as dangerous as this.

We were all okay, mostly, I did meet a lovely lady in our group who was knocked off her bike which was not good, but also not that surprising. I’m glad we did it but just didn’t feel as though the description matched the tour.

The crew onboard were very happy always to hear feedback about things like this and I’m sure they’ll make changes going forward. It was also peak of summer when we did this so the roads were probably busier than normal. 

We would often spend our evenings on the top deck, we’d pick up a cup of tea from the machine and the evenings felt like a UK summers day.

Everybody on the cruise was very friendly and interesting, by the end of the week I felt as though I knew at least half the guests fairly well. 

There was a great mix of people from the US, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, Brazil, all over.

One night they did play a film up here too, Casablanca. Not my kind of film. I’d much prefer them to play Ratatouille, but maybe they do that on river cruises in Paris.

Casablanca did make sense for the location, and I thought the set-up was really nice. 

Having any excursions included is quite a luxury for me. I usually don’t take cruise line organised excursions when I have to pay for them and just do my own thing in the ports.

On some cruise lines, the cost of excursions really can add up, and this got me thinking, did I get my money’s worth out of this cruise?

I paid £2000 for my cruise, for 7 nights including flights and transfers, staying in the cheapest cabin with my dad. We both paid that price.

We didn’t spend anything extra onboard at all. I actually went to the reception desk to check if I had to settle my account if it was £0, but they said I didn’t. 

I found that price in a sale just before Christmas, and the regular price of this cabin on any other cruise was much closer to £4000 per person which is $5200. 

The excursions that we went on were fantastic and not having to think about things like buying drinks was so relaxing. If you are somebody who would buy excursions and pay for drinks, it’s sometimes actually cheaper to pay more upfront and have those included.

For me I don’t drink enough or care enough about excursions to make the price increase really worth it but I loved giving it a go, I felt like an undercover budget cruiser. 

Of course, there are other benefits of luxury cruises too, like the fact that you have more space per person and the food and service are really good. It’s hard to quantify the value of that enough. 

I’ve never taken a cruise that I’ve not enjoyed, but if I’ve paid less, I just expect less. As long as I’m safe and clean and not hungry, I’m pretty happy! 

Before You Go

Unfortunately, my suitcase got left at Venice airport when I returned home. Find out more about what happened next here:

My Suitcase Was Left Behind – Here’s How I Knew Before Everybody Else – and Got It Back

Find out about the winter river cruise I took that had many last minute itinerary changes here:

I Took a Budget River Cruise That Went WRONG