November is one of my favorite times of the year to cruise the rivers of Europe. The summer crowds are gone; the weather is perfect for long walks, bike rides and morning stretching classes on the Sun Deck and the late autumn light reflecting off the fall foliage can make for breathtaking photography. It’s a perfect time of the year for our hosted Wine Cruises and for the first time, Rudi and I ourselves will be hosting Founder’s Cruises on the Danube departing November 17th and 18th.
AmaWaterways was created in 2002 as a family company and what better way to celebrate friends and family than for Rudi and I to host cruises the week of American Thanksgiving. We have many multi-generational families as well as solo travelers that cruise with us during the festive seasons and our crew are always on the lookout for personal ways to ensure that everyone feels part of our international AmaFamily.
There will be lots to celebrate on board - our ships are specially decorated for Thanksgiving and our chefs have a delicious Thanksgiving feast planned. Towards the end of the week, many towns along the Danube start opening their Christmas Markets. While food and wine will certainly be a focal point of the cruises, both AmaSonata and AmaCerto have Wellness Hosts onboard to help work off those extra calories. You will be able to join Rudi or me for some of the stretching, core strengthening and resistance band training classes held each day. I have been closely involved with the development of the new Wellness Program and I see it as a perfect complement to our popular biking and hiking excursions. I look forward to getting valuable feedback from everyone on board as we prepare to introduce Wellness Hosts on almost all our ships in 2019.
Rudi and I always enjoy spending time with our guests during a cruise. We love sharing stories of how the AmaFamily has grown over the past 16 years and hearing our guests’ stories of the special moments created by our wonderful crews onboard our ships. In order to share more stories and photos from our guests and crew members, we recently launched a quarterly e-magazine called “Beyond the River Banks”.
We look forward to welcoming many of our repeat clients and their families on one of our special Founder’s Cruises and we also hope to welcome many first-time cruisers and create new AmaLove stories for them. Whichever cruise you chose, Rudi and I will visit each other’s ship once during our cruises which will make for a fun evening all together. Hope to see you around our Thanksgiving table this year.