River Cruises

River Cruises - Absorb A Bit Of History

When you’re feeling the urge to act a little like Mark Twain, you may think about booking yourself on one of many river cruises. A quiet, relaxing and sightseeing expedition down a slow moving artery may be just the quiet type of vacation you’re looking for.

While many think of cruises as being on huge boats on the ocean, others see cruises as a few hours of frantic fun in foreign ports followed by several hours of nothing but looking at water. River cruises can still offer the relaxation of an ocean cruise, but keep land mainly in sight.

Rediscovering America’s past is available during river cruises in a variety of locations. The Mississippi, the Missouri, Snake River, and the Ohio River are all waterways that can be explored on river cruises.

Old Time Steamboats Churn Up Rivers Into History

The Delta Queen Steamboat line offers the stately ships of old with well-appointed staterooms and the churning of the paddlewheel that marked the steamships to take on the mighty rivers. As an example, the Mississippi Queen makes a run from St. Louis to Nashville and stops at Civil War era cities.

You can learn about the Trail of Tears in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, and then visit Paducah, Kentucky, just south of the point where the Ohio and Tennessee Rivers come together. This is where 173 steamboats boarded about 42,000 Union soldiers, joined with gunboats and traveled to Shiloh.  Next you can be on the site where, in 1862, Union soldiers exchanged artillery fire with Confederate soldiers.

Of course if you’re more adventuresome and want to see more of the world, you can find river cruises around the rest of the rest of the globe. You can tour the banks of the Amazon River, the Yangtze River as it cuts through China, and the Danube River through Austria and Bulgaria.

The Dnieper River through the Ukraine to the Black Seas lets you learn about the old world culture and the Cossacks as well as Viking excursions and Ghengis Khan’s rule. So much rich history is available on a global scale, with so many sights to be found on even one of hundreds of river cruises.

Understand that choosing river cruises outside the United States will require a passport and the necessary visas. It is also advisable to carry a copy of the first page of all documents in case the originals are lost, in a separate location from the originals.