I did the Ultimate France with Uniworld in Apr 18. I travelled with another company last year and was able to compare the 2. Uniworld did not have the best port stops on the Ultimate France tour and mainly bused it to villages, leaving little time to explore these on your own. Bordeaux, Lyon and Paris were very good, but all of the other stops were very average and not much to see. The second cruise on the Joie De Vivre, the ship shuddered a lot and was more intense at night - making it an uncomfortable sleep. The third cruise on the SS Catherine had a group of 81 people celebrating a reunion, they were loud and behaved like the cruise was just for them, making the others feel like they shouldn't be there - it felt very much like an 'us and them'. Whilst the Uniworld ships were lovely, I found this company to be more a bus trip, at times travelling up to 3 hours each way to see things, leaving very little time to explore on your own. For the price you pay I expected more from this company. Will go back to the previous company which had fantastic port stops and had adequate free time built into every excursion.

The dining experience was good, but did not really celebrate local foods.

In summary, when booking a river cruise do your research to find out about the port stops as this makes a big difference and if there are any large groups on board because it could spoil the experience.