by Katie McElveen
Viking Longship on the Main River, Aschaffenburg, Germany.
viking
If you’re looking forward to taking a cruise but can’t decide between an intimate river journey or the awesomeness of an ocean cruise, consider choosing both! This creative way of cruising enables you to see and do more in a single vacation. Also, if you’re able to book your preferred itinerary with one cruise company, you could save money. These cruises are different from traditional back-to-backs, which typically are defined as two consecutive voyages on the same ship. Because ships are constructed either for river cruising or for ocean cruising, you won’t be on the same boat. Nevertheless, you can still book an ocean cruise and then a river cruise (or vice versa) when they share a port city.
Oceania Vista off the coast of Argostoli, Greece
OCEANIA CRUISES
Having the best of both sailings is not as complicated as you might think. In a number of European and American coastal cities, river ships and ocean liners leave from ports that are a short taxi ride away from each other. Take Bordeaux, France, for example, where you can embark on a roundtrip river cruise along the Gironde and Garonne rivers to marvel at chateaus and sip wine, and then transfer to an ocean voyage to Barcelona. Or, after ocean cruising the Mediterranean and disembarking in Lisbon, transfer to Porto to hop aboard a river cruise through Portugal’s Douro Valley. You even can combine a domestic sailing of New York’s Hudson River with a leisurely Atlantic Ocean crossing to Southampton, England.
Port Vell, Barcelona, Spain
GETTY IMAGES
Many times, you might travel with one cruise company for the river portion and a different operator for the ocean sailing, but this style of cruising has become so popular that at least one cruise line offers river and ocean combinations. The pairing is presented as a single itinerary through Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, France and Germany, concluding in Switzerland.
Deluxe Veranda Stateroom, Viking river cruise
VIKING
Tea service on board a Uniworld cruise
UNIWORLD
To figure out your best option, work with a AAA Travel Advisor, who can share the various itineraries and handle all the logistics, including flights, transportation between ships and more, to ensure your vacation is smooth sailing.