As I’ve mentioned previously, I never thought that I would enjoy a river cruise, but now I’m a river cruise convert!
My friends at TravelPulse.com published an article that I wrote about my river cruise conversion!
https://www.travelpulse.com/voices/opinions/from-ocean-to-river-my-cruise-conversion-journey
I’m a U.S. Navy veteran and during my career, I visited Italy Spain, France and several other countries. After I left the Navy, my wife and I sailed on Holland America Line, Royal Caribbean, MSC. I’ve sailed on NCL and Virgin Voyages.
I was recently invited to sail on the Riviera Travel MS George Eliot on a Rhine River cruise that included Cologne, Koblenz, the Rhine Gorge and Mainz, Heidelberg, Strasbourg, and Rudesheim.
I began my journey leaving from Jacksonville, Fl to Charolette, NC, then on to Frankfurt Germany on American Airlines. Thankfully, there were no delays on my trip to and from Germany. The only snag was at the immigration line in Frankfurt which took about 20 minutes.
After I went through immigration (and yes, I just had a carry on bag), I took the free bus from the terminal to the train station which took about 10 minutes.
I would think that the Germany trains ran on time, but nope! The train was delayed about 45 minutes and then we arrived to the Cologne train station about 45 minutes late!
There are lots of food options, including Mc’Donalds at the train station!
When you exit the train station in Cologne, to the left you will see the Cologne Cathedral!
I flew into Cologne a day early to help my body clock (and digestive system) adjust to the new time zone.
The Hotel was a 15 minute walk from the train station, and it took about 10 minutes to walk from the hotel to the MS George Eliot.
I was able to check in early, get some food nearby and had a good night’s sleep before I sailed on the MS George Eliot on Oct 16th, 2025
The MS George Eliot was built in 2019, has a crew of 38, 70 cabins, and holds 132 passengers.
Here’s a video of my cabin:
The crew, food, service and ship were amazing. The Captain let me take a look at the wheel house (bridge).
Here’s a video of the Welcome Party and Toast
To sum it up, I had an amazing time on the Riviera Travel MS George Eliot. Go to my YouTube channel to see all my videos. You can also search Scott Lara on Facebook to see a lot of my pictures.
If you are a member of the military or veteran, please go to MilitaryFares.com to book your hotel, airfare and vacation. If you want to book a river or ocean cruise, email me directly at scott@militaryfares.com
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If you book through MilitaryFares.com, use promo code MilitaryFares when you check out to get 1 free gig of data and 20% off future data plans with GigSky!
Here’s a few more pictures of the trip!
