I'm an experienced ocean cruiser, but this was my first smaller river cruise, and I was unsure of what to expect. Well, it was great! We took the March 30th Amsterdam to Basel, Switzerland cruise on the AmaCerto. We arranged our flights to Amsterdam and home from Zurich through AMA, but we did not do their extensions, so transfers were not included. That was fine with us. The timing of the AMA extensions didn't work with our schedules, so while we did stay in Amsterdam 3 nights before the cruise, then in Lucerne 2 nights after, this did not coordinate with their offered extensions. (The post-cruise extension offered was for 4 nights, and my work schedule did not allow for that.)

After spending 3 nights on our own in Amsterdam (and falling completely in love with that city) we got ourselves to the boat. That was a little confusing, we were just dragging our suitcases through the train station to the harbor behind. Signage wasn't great, but we just started walking to where we could see several river boats at one end. The AmaCerto was docked at the far right end, behind a couple river boats. It meant we were a little sweaty and bedraggled by the time we each rolled our heavy suitcases that far, but once to the boat they took over. We were met outside by a couple of nice crew members who instantly took our bags from us and let us walk up the gangway unencumbered. Check-in was super fast and easy. Nothing like the slow security line you go through for ocean cruises. Within 60 seconds of entering the ship we had our room keys and were being escorted to our room.

We were in a fixed window, Category D room on the Piano Deck. We were in room 103, with fixed, water level, windows. I went with my normal ocean cruise theory that we would not spend a lot of time in the room, and opted for the lowest level. The room was better than I'd expected. There was a very roomy closet, with plenty of room to hang any and all clothing you want. There were pull out drawers under the beds too, for non-hanging items. Though, because of the underbed drawers, there was only room to stash one suitcase under the beds. The other we stuck in a corner behind a chair. The room was tight, but comfortable. We expected this, we booked it knowing it was the lowest square footage of the rooms on the ship. We are on the youngish side of river cruisers (in our early 40s) so we weren't bothered by squeezing around each other, or even crawling across the bed, when we needed to quickly get around the room. But, I know some less mobile cruisers (such as my parents) would not be happy with such tight quarters. There is only about 12-18 inches from the foot of the bed to the wall, so no room to walk past each other. Read more