We chose it as we wanted to revisit an area of France we knew well from at least 25 years of camping among the vineyards of southern France.
We arrived in Lyon on excellent Eurostar direct from St Pancras.
We were met and whisked swiftly through the lovely city of Lyon to the pretty riverside, to embark on A-ROSA Stella, emblazoned with ( rather naff looking ) red lips!
We were swiftly ...
Having been on 3 other river cruises, we found one that went down the Rhone, which we had not gone on before. The Rosa Stella is about 12 years old, but extremely well kept and very clean. In fact it is the cleanest cruise ship we've ever been on. Our cabin was a decent size - not large but well appointed and the beds were comfortable. We had a French balcony, meaning you could open the doors ...
The pre cruise 3 day stay in Prague, together with Vienna and Budapest were the high points of this, our second river cruise. The views from our Juliette cabin window were magnificent and come highly recommended.The weather was typically very hot but the air conditioning kept us all cool until one evening it broke down for a few hours. Generally however, the facilities onboard were maintained to a ...
I'm not sure why A-rosa is bunked for Americans...in fact, I wondered why more English speaking cruisers weren't on board. The staff all spoke English as well as German (most of the crew were Eastern European) and the service was excellent. We appreciated the spotless ship; the accommodating service from all the staff (constant attention to detail...fabulous hard working and conscientious). ...
When we booked this package in April 2015 it was advertised as starting from Amsterdam on 21st August with an overnight stay in port and departing later the following day - this was exactly what we wanted as this was during Sail Amsterdam 2015 which was an event that only happens every 5 years and was the main reason for booking the cruise.
Some 3 weeks before the event we received notification ...
Overall:
I think it is very tricky to try to add Americans to what was once a mainly German cruise line. The announcements were in English and German and all the printed materials were in English and German.
We did get an all-English newsletter every day and an all-English “Daily Calendar”
The staff was pretty much bi-lingual, but their first language was German, so they spoke to one another in ...
I wanted to give you an update of our experiences on the Arosa Bella cruise on the Danube. Let me start out that there were 5 of us traveling in 3 cabins. We are all in our late 40's-early 50's. We got a text the night before the cruise was to start while we were in Munich that the locks were down in Slovakia and the boat could not get to Passau so we would be bussed to the boat in Hungary. This ...
We had very favourable impressions in entering the small "lobby" with shop display, reception desk, and staircases aft to the sleeping quarters, forward to dining room and lounges, and below to gym and sauna. The ship for its size was very well equipped and comfortable for the 170 passengers. The air conditioned cabins are not large but with sufficient storage space, TV (mainly German channels) ...
I just returned from the A-Rosa Stella Provence river cruise (sailing on Saone and Rhone rivers), August 2013. The all-inclusive cruise experience was great!
The cruise included a wide range of ages from 30-80 yrs -- several 30-40 year olds who loved to party from USA, many 50 year olds from USA, and about 40 German / British passengers.
Our French balcony cabin had 2 doors that opened wide (not ...
All of the river cruise offerings in Europe are good- very good in fact. They occupy a niche akin to the likes of Azamara or Oceania, if one wanted to reference ocean-going ship experiences.
The components are straight forward, as the dictates of rivers and locks pretty much constrain the hardware.
Ships are all virtually the same size. So the Viking Longships are the same as those of Uniworld ...