Leaving home for the holidays can be hard. For some, it feels like you are leaving behind tradition, family and friends, all of which seems unthinkable. I was one of those people – until I did my first Christmas Markets cruise.

The year was 2010, and I was a mere 14 years old. I had done only one other river cruise, and that was on the Mekong. So not only was this my first Christmas Markets cruise, but also my first river cruise in Europe.

It is hard to believe that it has been almost a month since I left for France to sail on Emerald Cruises’ Liberte. The ship so quickly felt like home, and I have been missing it dearly for the nearly three weeks since I have returned to North Carolina.

Those of you who have read our previous coverage from the journey know that I sailed with my grandmother, GG. We were invited by Emerald Cruises to spend eight days in Southern France, sailing from Arles up to Lyon along the river Rhone.

GG and I had dinner together last night and shared our stories from the trip with the rest of the family. Though I already posted Three Things I Loved About Emerald Liberte, our dinner conversation last night left me wanting to share more with you. There is so much to love about the ship, crew and the Emerald experience as a whole. Read the rest of this entry »

Britton and her grandmother are cruising the Rhone on Emerald Liberte. They are guests of Emerald Cruisers for the purposes of this review. Britton has been sending updates of her trip as they cruise along. She’ll have a more detailed report when she returns home.

Saturday, June 4, 2022

WELCOME ABOARD

Day one of the journey. How exciting! I have to admit, the airport was not easy. This is a busy time of year, and it is normal to expect delays and cancelations. In fact, some of our fellow passengers didn’t make it to the boat until late in the evening, and some even arrived the following day. Read the rest of this entry »

It has been a dream of mine to take my grandmother, GG, on a river cruise for quite some time. My dreams were put on hold as an array of scheduling issues and a little thing called COVID plagued the travel industry. After months of planning, I was able to deliver the most exciting news to my grandmother in March: “GG! We’re going to Germany.”

The plan was simple. GG and I would fly to Frankfurt to experience one of Emerald Cruises’ Moselle river cruises. I was excited to cruise the Moselle, as it has been dubbed Europe’s most beautiful river by my father. Unfortunately, the trip wasn’t as easy to execute as I had initially thought…

Not minutes after I hung up the phone inviting GG to join me in Germany, she started packing her bags. My grandmother is a very prepared woman. Some joke that I was born with a clipboard in my hand. If that’s the case, then GG was born with a daily planner, calendar, checklists (yes, more than one), a rolodex, an Excel Spreadsheet, and a filing cabinet in hers Read the rest of this entry »