Why I build trips around small ships
Because the staff greets you by name. Because you dock where a bigger ship can't. Because dinner is local to where you woke up.
I'm in motion in this category — onboard when I can be, in supplier meetings and conferences when I can't. The work stays current.
New to all this? Start with Choosing the Right River Cruise →︎ — my honest guide to picking the river, the line, the cabin, and the week.
What I actually plan
Four ways to travel by water — each matched to the route, the pace, and who's aboard.
River Cruises
The Danube by lamplight. The Douro at harvest. The Mekong at first light. Your room a deck-chair's distance from every port. See also the rivers guide and AmaWaterways.
Small Ship Ocean
The Dalmatian coast. The Greek isles past Santorini. Japan's Inland Sea. Harbors a bigger ship couldn't fit inside of if it tried.
Expedition Voyages
Galápagos. Antarctica. Svalbard. The Northwest Passage. Naturalists onboard, not cabarets. See also UnCruise in the Galápagos.
Private Yachts & Barges
French canals. Croatian coastlines. Chartered catamarans. For the trip where the ship itself is the itinerary. See also Belmond afloat in France.
Trip shapes I'm planning right now
Five sailings on my desk this season — pick one if it speaks to you, take the quiz if it doesn't.
The Danube in Christmas-Market Season
Christmas markets, lamplit ports, the river moving through Slovakia in the dark with no sound except itself. The trip that converted me.
Open the guide →︎ River · 7–8 nights · Oct–AprThe Mekong at First Light
Cambodia to Vietnam at the speed the region actually operates. The one I want people to know about.
Open the guide →︎ River · 7 nights · Sep–OctThe Douro at Harvest
Portugal's interior, schist terraces in copper light, harvest pulling every worker in the valley into the vines.
Open the guide →︎ Small ship · 7–14 nights · May–SepAlaska's Inside Passage by Small Ship
Glacier Bay, Sitka, the parts of Alaska a 4,000-passenger ship can't reach. UnCruise is the vendor I keep recommending.
Open the UnCruise hub →︎ Expedition · 7–8 nights · Nov–AprThe Sea of Cortez by Small Ship
Steinbeck's Baja, blue whales, paddleboards off the back of the ship at sunset. UnCruise's winter pivot — and the shape almost nobody asks for until they hear about it.
Open the guide →︎What makes a small ship trip mine
The Pre & Post Trip
A good river cruise plan starts three days before you board and ends two after. Hotels in Budapest, a winery afternoon in the Douro, a day wandering Basel — that's where the itinerary earns its keep.
The Right Cabin, the Right Itinerary
I match the ship to the trip — and the cabin to the ship. I know which deck gives you the view, which side faces the morning sun on a Danube heading west, and which shore excursion is worth skipping for an unhurried afternoon in town. The sailing lines I recommend are ones I've seen myself or have direct relationships with the operations teams that matter when something needs fixing mid-sailing.
The Network Behind the Trip
I'm part of Signature Travel Network and the supplier circles that come with it. That gives me real leverage with the desks that build your trip — and the kind of help you can't book online when something needs fixing mid-sailing. The specifics tend to land as surprises onboard. They're better that way.
The river line I keep coming back to is AmaWaterways. For wilderness small-ship work — UnCruise →︎
For the small-ship feel at ocean scale, the Cunard transatlantic →︎
Trips like these are planned on a fee that scales with their complexity — here's what it actually buys →︎
The longer version of how I think about all this lives in the manifesto →︎
Who are small ships for?
Repeat cruisers who never want to see another buffet line again. First-timers who value intimacy over scale. Couples marking a milestone. Multigenerational groups who need a calm floor that moves on its own. Art lovers, wine people, history people. Anyone who believes arriving is part of the trip.
From the journal
A Thanksgiving on the Danube
"There's something quietly radical about spending Thanksgiving alone on a river in Central Europe. No frozen turkey, no family chaos, no football. Just a glass of Austrian Grüner Veltliner, the soft glow of Christmas market lights reflecting off the Danube, and the slow, easy rhythm of a ship that seems to know exactly what you need before you do."
Budapest to Nuremberg on the AmaReina — a week of Christmas markets, no frozen turkey in sight, and the trip that turned me into a river cruise convert. The full account, ports and all, lives in the journal.