Short European river cruises? Last minute bookings?
 

Hi there,

I recently did a 4 night/5 day Bordeaux-Bordeaux river cruise with CroisiEurope (Princesse d'Aquitaine) and thought that it was fantastic (Mrs Luftaom and I were half the age of all the other guests) - I'd love to do another.

The catch is that I am time poor and there aren't (m)any other 4 night (or shorter) cruises over a weekend - which is kind of what I am looking for.

In Koblenz a number of years ago I recall seeing one of the boats plying the length of the Rhine having a sandwich board out the front advertising last minute (or late booking) discounted short cruises (no doubt trying to fill in cabins which would otherwise go empty between bookings for parts of the trip up and down the Rhine). I regrettably didn't note the details.

Does anyone know if there is a site which does last minute or late notice, short European river cruise bookings (even 1 or 2 nights)?

Any other related helpful suggestions would be very welcome.

VacationsToGo has a sister site for River cruises - no clue if it offers good last minute rates though. I've been getting some great fares via email from the river cruise companies themselves this year - some theories that bookings are down because Americans are scared to go to Europe (well, airfare isn't lower, so....Not sure I agree with that hypothesis ;-) I think supply just exploded and prices are still fairly high, so.....)

We did a Christmas market river cruise in 2014 that sold different segments - some were fairly short. We were on NUE-BSL but some started earlier (Vienna) and some boarded in the middle, so.....

There are some ships in the German market that do very short ones but I cannot remember the names (there are a couple of German locals who post in the Cruise Critic river cruises forum who give some great info on that sort of thing - though of course on that site you cannot mention travel agents, so....)