River Ambassador

 This was our first experience on the river cruise. We chose this cruise line because of the all inclusive factor and the itinerary.  And of course, the one alcohol I drink was not included! Absolute mandarin and absolute were included but Absolute Citron I had to pay for? That didn't make sense so I just ordered Absolute and added lemons. Solved!! I do realize this ship is one of their older ones in the line and every effort was made to make it look lovely.  The color scheme was lovely.  The room and hall artwork was atrocious. I'm not a prude but the artwork was so pornographic and showed every Kama Sutra pose possible. The decor of ship was elegant and the then you look at the pictures and wonder why?  The room: so small! And I mean small.  My husband had to sit on bed so I could open closet and get clothes. 2 people could not stand in there at same time. Bed was comfy tho and room was clean. We were hardly in room anyway.  We spent most of our time in the lounge looking out the windows. Unfortunately most of our cruise had rain so couldn't sit up top.  Food was fine.  There were 3 meals a day at set times.  Breakfast and lunch were amazing buffets and dinner was a set menu.  And the dinners took 2-2.5 hours. 2 nights we just didn't want to sit there so we had a sandwich sent up to the lounge.  While the menus were fine, I thought they could have reflected the region we were in more.  We are in Germany...give us German food.  Make the evenings fun! Have a German band come in and play. Do karaoke. How about a talent show. The evenings tended to get boring.  The lounge act consisted of a lounge singer on a keyboard doing jazz which was lovely but repetitive.  The staff on Uniworld were amazing. Truly outstanding service, pleasant and anxious to fulfill any request. The itinerary was wonderful but misleading. For instance our day in Rothenburg was not a day. We pulled into port around 930-10; and we had to stay on board until lunch was over at 1! Busses came at 1 and drove us the 1.5 hours to Rothenburg and then we had a short tour of the town and then given one hour on our own and then made the drive back. There should have been a choice of a bus as soon as we got into port because many of us would rather miss lunch if that meant an extra couple hours in town.  And the tour guide gave us a tour of the shops and street; we want to know the history and the old buildings and the wall. That's the tour we want...the history! Another today we were in Wurzberg and took a tour of the awesome residence palace. Lovely tour and then we walked back to bus. On the way our guide pointed out the several beautiful churches, and said no time to go in. Pointed out the lovely shops and again, no time to go in. Very frustrating to have only 2 hours in the town and not be able to go into anything. Miltenberg was lovely and finally a town where we had time to explore. We had a true German lunch, escaped the tour and did it on our own and it was the best day and truly a lovely town. Our visit to Strasbourg was lovely. The walking tour and cathedral were very nice. Sat outside at a cafe enjoying wine listening to bells were awesome.  Then we had to be back on the  ship by one to set sail for Basel. And why we could not stay in Strasburg and disembark the ship there the next morning I don't know. Because all we did in Basel was arrive and be off the ship by 830 in the morning and go right to the airport. So for Basel to be a stop was very misleading because all it was was  A port of disembarkation. It seems like we could've gotten much more out of our visit to Strasbourg if we stayed all night and just disembark the ship there the next morning.  There was an international airport there so maybe something to consider in the future?  Our land portion of the cruise was in Prague which was lovely. We had two nights and three days there and we did do quite a bit of sightseeing and had some lovely meals there.  Overall I would say the service was amazing but I probably would not do this cruise again just because of the time limitations in each town. If we could've had an 8 AM to 5 PM in each town that would be different but to have only  A couple hours in a town that you've traveled so far to see just does not seem right. 

Other that the small staterooms\, the ship was perfect

This was our second river cruise and second time on Uniworld. This ship was smaller than the other one which was fine except the cabin was a little tighter. And they keep bringing so many free things\, like fruit and slippers and robes and etc. It gets crowded in there. Closets are small\, so much so that you have to actually angle the hangers to close the door and your pants/coats etc don't even have enough room to hang freely. Instead they puddle on the bottom of the shelf. But the room is updated and very well appointed. Luggage is stored under the bed\, so that is not an issue. Overall we enjoyed the cruise. Be careful about sailing this time of year. We had rain\, but nothing that would spoil the cruise. And it was very cold up until the time we sailed\, resulting in a delay in the gardens fully blooming. But you can't control mother nature.