My travel bucket list has always included a visit to Amsterdam - and the famous Keukenhof gardens - during tulip season. After much research, I chose a river cruise on AMA Waterways and the AMAKristina as my first European river cruise. AMA offered an itinerary that included tours of all the places I wanted to visit - Keukenhof, the Kinderdjik windmills, DeltaWorks and a full day excursion to Bruges Belgium. The cruise began and ended in Amsterdam, making round trip air travel simple and reasonably priced.

Boarding the AMAKristina was quick and easy. I’d received detailed information about the docking location and a cab quickly took my husband and I to the dock at the 3:00pm check-in time. We were greeted, and immediately shown to our cabin, which was clean and ready at check-in. The entire ship - inside and out - was spotlessly clean throughout the cruise. I had been concerned about tying up next to other river cruise ships to access ports. There were often many river ships at popular ports, but walking through them to reach the shore gave me a chance to check out other cruise lines I’d considered - and wasn’t particularly inconvenient. But there was no thought of using the balcony when the balcony of another ship was only feet away!

Our double-balcony cabin was nicely decorated however, and offered enough space to store all our clothing and bath supplies, and just enough underbed storage for two large suitcases and two rollaboards. Both the cabin and bath were cozy, but larger and more comfortable than we expected. We especially enjoyed the Mac system included in the cabin - a large screen used for TV and movies, but including a keyboard and mouse so it could also be used to access the internet and shipboard information. The bed was very comfortable and the bath had a great shower, with both rainfall and removable shower heads. My only complaint was lack of any shelf space in the shower for holding shampoo etc - seems like such a simple thing to be omitted! Read more