See it on TV. The word cruise, nowadays, tends to bring up pictures in the mind of large white liners sliding through tropical waters, while what seems like a couple of thousand people disport themselves in luxury. There are cruises of another sort. The ships carry maybe a couple of hundred people and they cruise, not the oceans, but the major rivers of Europe, the Rhine, the Elbe, the Danube, the Volga, the Rhone, and others. TV in all cabins, air conditioning, sunbathing terrace and heated open-air pool, sauna and solarium. First-class restaurant, of course. The lot.
You could start a Rhine trip in Basle, Switzerland, and in no time you're slipping past the Black Forest and on your way to Strasbourg, a city where you can spend a few hours with or without guide; one of the great cities of Europe. When you move on, this particular cruise lets you off somewhere for a bus excursion to one of the places everyone should see: Heidelberg. It has been written about by everyone from Goethe to Brecht. And you still couldn't see it often enough. Spared by Allied bombers in the last World War; and the Old City is still there, and you'll go to see the castle up in the woods.
What else are you likely to see as you go on down towards Holland. Well, Koblenz, or Coblence, is where the Moselle comes into the Rhine and that river's wines are its chief claim to fame, though you are soon coming into a stretch of the Rhine where the vineyards are along almost precipitous slopes. It is said, with probably some basis of fact, that in late summer nearly every village and town has its own wine festival, with much open-air fun to the sound of mainly brass bands. Don't know, maybe that's gone. By then you will have passed Bonn - not much to look at - and aren't the politicians soon moving back to Berlin? Cologne, or Koln, has a cathedral worth looking at. And you've read about the famous Lorelei rock and the siren song; perhaps the Mouse Tower, too. The ship will surely have lots of reading.
The Rhine, outside its big cities, has wonderful scenery, and as, away from the Atlantic mid-Europe can have very good summers, you should be on deck a lot of the time. The last stage brings you to Amsterdam through flat and soothing Holland. Or maybe you prefer to try the Danube, or the Volga and Neva from St. Petersbourg to Moscow. (There are also, believe it or not, get-away-from-it-all Christmas cruises of three or four days! Or get-away-from-them-all?).