We Took Our 5-year-old Son on a European River Cruise — Here’s Why It Was the Ultimate Family Vacation

“Keep up, mummy,” bellowed Sebastian, my fearless 5-year-old, as he and my husband, Eamonn, descended into Antwerp Cathedral’s eerie crypt. This subterranean locker, accessed by the use of a slender coiling staircase off the church nave, is a mini room with a low ceiling and crumbling hole tombs. A shiver crept up my backbone as I stood a few of the left-overs of this former burial chamber. This used to be my cue to go back to the farmland ground of Antwerp’s peculiar Gothic cathedral. 

Year Sebastian and Eamonn explored the dimly lit crypt, I took the chance to gaze on the church’s 3 Baroque masterpieces through Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens, prior to we reconvened on the cathedral’s bar and bistro, De Plek, moments next. The bar, within a chapel of the cathedral, serves the church’s personal brews, together with a dim and blond ale. Simplest in beer-loving Belgium, I assumed to myself, would you to find beers served within a church. 

We had been visiting Antwerp on age six of a seven-night kin river cruise at the Rhine onboard A-Rosa Cruises’ A-Rosa Sena. Launch in Cologne, Germany, our voyage would hurry us northwest to Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and Dordrecht within the Netherlands, after to Antwerp prior to turning back Cologne. 

River cruising and households don’t — in most cases — journey in combination, with maximum river cruise traces catering to a far used marketplace and providing few kin amenities, if any in any respect. German river cruise layout A-Rosa Cruises has all set about converting this with the forming of the family-orientated A-Rosa Sena, which debuted in June 2022. 

The hybrid send, partly electric-powered, is the biggest at the Rhine, wearing as much as 280 visitors, and the vessel additionally boasts some nifty business firsts. There’s a jaunty children’ membership; 12 massive kin cabins measuring 301 sq. ft, drowsing as much as 5 with integrated bunkbeds; and a devoted children’ scatter pond at the supremacy deck. 

The principle pond, adjoining to the scatter pond, is nearly 250 sq. ft, making it bulky plenty to swim snip laps. For grown-ups, there’s a spa, a buzzy living room, a solar deck bar, and a wine room for tasting native libations.

It’s all a part of A-Rosa’s challenge to attract extra households to river cruising — and it’s running, says Serkan Bilici, A-Rosa Sena’s worker lodge supervisor. “We currently have 32 children onboard, and all of our family cabins are occupied,” Bilici advised Journey + Relief. “During summer, this was even higher, with over 40 children sailing, from babies up to teens, and guests from over 20 different countries.” 

“We also offered swimming lessons aboard selected sailings in August, which were very popular,” Serkan provides. Certainly, there have been small children, little toddlers, used kids, and teenagers on our weeklong October crusing. 

The send, which essentially operates in English and German, guarantees that kids are smartly sorted. Generally, there are two hosts on the children’ membership, and on our crusing, host Mai arranged a “Meet the Captain” tournament, fund hunts, and humanities and crafts periods. The kids got sovereignty too, sovereign to select precisely how they spend their presen on the membership, with video games, books, and enough quantity of territory for younger passengers to refreshment.  

The youngsters’ membership is a genuine deal with for households. Adorned with nautical-themed paintings, the territory is comfortable and welcoming, with kids studying, coloring, and constructing dens day we performed numerous rounds of Snakes and Ladders with Sebastian.  

It wasn’t the kin amenities rejected that lured us in, despite the fact that — our voyage, “Rhine Experience Amsterdam & Rotterdam,” used to be a bulky remove.

Admittedly, this northwest category of the Rhine, flat and extra commercial, doesn’t have the cinematic drama of the extra southerly stretch, the place vineyards, castles, and medieval cities flank the waterway. However with in a single day remains in ludicrously lovely Amsterdam and fashionable and buzzy Rotterdam, our itinerary excited us. 

We explored Cologne’s ravishing twin-spire cathedral on a gloriously sun-baked fall age. Then, we roamed Rotterdam’s well-known Piet Blom-designed dice homes and town’s skillful Maritime Museum, the place all the rooftop is devoted to kids.  

Lesser-known Dordrecht, one of the most oldest towns within the Netherlands, felt like wandering a real-life fairytale. Compact and walkable, its cobbled streets are jam-packed with wonky, characterful service provider homes, vintage retail outlets, artisan workshops, and old fashioned cafes. 

We crack our age right here between exploring town’s mesmerizing streets and De Biesbosch Nationwide Soil at the fringe of Dordrecht. If it hadn’t been lashing unwell with drizzle, we might have cycled from Dordrecht’s heart to the keep, which takes round 40 mins. In lieu, we made the windy 10-minute walk by the use of the native Waterbus carrier.  

We’d simply heard of De Biesbosch a couple of weeks previous, but it’s amongst Europe’s greatest freshwater tidal zones, house to a couple 300 dam-building beavers. Made up of round 22,000 acres of streams, rivers, willow woodlands, marshes, and meadows, it used to be a welcome discovery.

In addition to beavers, the keep is lavish in birdlife, together with osprey, sea eagles, kingfishers, and kestrels. Canoes and boats may also be leased and are one of the simplest ways to discover this gigantic community of swampy paths and islands. 

A-Rosa do business in some tours geared in opposition to households, comparable to a travel to Antwerp Zoo or Madurodam, a small terrain within the Netherlands. We chosen to do our personal factor at each and every vacation spot, in moderation balancing presen enroute with presen in each and every river port. 

“But I don’t want to leave the boat,” Sebastian would grumble each and every morning we left the send. Then again, his reluctance used to be quickly forgotten as we explored family-friendly museums and exciting nature reserves, and he used to be handled to a heat waffle with lashings of chocolate in Antwerp.

Early on in our voyage, next a lower than harmonious evening’s peace that noticed Sebastian climb into our king-size mattress at 2 a.m., I nearly wept with gratitude after I remembered the youngsters’ membership had programming get started proper next breakfast. So, day Sebastian fortunately performed, we stuck a pleased residue time of extra prior to heading to the NEMO Science Museum in Amsterdam, a bulky strike with households due to its 5 flooring demystifying sciences. 

Our penultimate age onboard noticed us spend an entire age crusing. It used to be our anticipation to carve out presen to refreshment. My husband joined a salmon-curing elegance day I visited the sauna, the place I used to be in an instant reminded that A-Rosa is a German excursion operator — with most commonly German passengers — that means washing fits are non-compulsory and infrequently impaired. I additionally indulged in a Thalgo facial, the place Jelena, a former spa supervisor with Cunard and Superstar Cruises, gave my dull-looking pores and skin a pleased facial therapeutic massage. 

We accompanied Sebastian to a pizza-making elegance with one of the crucial alternative children led through the chef within the send’s pastry galley. His jaw dropped as he skilled a real-life Willy Wonka generation; simplest the chocolate-filled conveyor belts had been changed with vats of colourful churning ice cream. 

As he ate his chaotic-looking pizza together with his newfound pals, Eamonn and I contemplated whether or not to select a sliver of dressed salmon, red meat goulash, or each for dinner. Any other mealtime spotlight used to be osso buco, a divine sauce-laden veal shank. 

Veal used to be a reoccurring theme, with juicy, seared cuts of the beef served one night and meatballs any other. A nightly kids’s buffet additionally featured common dishes comparable to spaghetti bolognese and macaroni and cheese. A spotlight for Sebastian: the 3 selfmade ice lotions set off each and every night, whole with diverse toppings. Along with the primary buffet eating place, A-Rosa Sena has a uniqueness steak eating place the place passengers can dine on salmon sashimi and pork entrecôte for an spare rate. 

One night, we dined off the send in Amsterdam and ate supper at a comfortable bistro on a nook of Prinsengracht. Eating on bowls of frivolously curried mussels at a sun-dappled canal-side desk, we imagined milestones and romantic dinners had been celebrated over the eating place’s intimate candlelit tables within.

Then, in lieu of becoming a member of the quiz within the send’s living room, we crashed out in our cabin to observe one of the most kin motion pictures (“Peter Rabbit” used to be decided on through Sebastian). Our Deck 3 room had a balcony, enough quantity of closet territory, a settee mattress, and a flatscreen TV as bulky as you’d to find in any luxurious lodge. Some nights, we drifted to peace with the loadshedding curtains somewhat ajar, permitting moonlight to waft in as we lazily floated alongside the Rhine.

Considering of our whole travel, touring to 5 towns in 3 nations over 8 days any alternative means would had been, frankly, whiplash-inducing and no doubt hard, However this fashion, taking within the affectionate bends of the Rhine, felt unhurried, completely punctuated with towns that matched the power and interest of our nearly 6-year-old.

In any case, it wasn’t simply the attractions that made the travel memorable, however the quiet week of the river that allowed us to really savor each and every generation with our son.