When Americans travel to the great capitals of Europe, they frequently find themselves surrounded by masses of tourists, or else in areas that have been so modernized that they resemble large cities of the United States. This doesn't happen on a European river cruise, as I am now learning. You stop in secondary cities, like Cologne or Rüdesheim in Germany, where tourism has only a faint presence, and you pass numerous other smaller towns where life hasn't changed in the past four hundred years.

After traveling for a fair distance along the Rhine, our Amadeus Waterways riverboat with its 140 passengers diverted for a time onto the Mosel River flanked by countless vineyards producing the sweet or semi-sweet Mosel wines. For hours on end we witnessed the viniculture of this German area and the small towns whose inhabitants usually own small parcels of land handed down to them by earlier generations and eke out a modest living -- fiercely defending ownership of their small plots, they rarely sell out to larger wine producers and thus maintain a classic rural atmosphere that has been refreshing to experience.

Our riverboat, celebrating this passage through the Mosel Valley, made sure to serve us Mosel whites at meals, which we drank like water. And on our first morning in the Mosel region, on our way to Cochem, the European-managed riverboat emulated the Mosel tradition by serving us a mid-morning meal -- just two hours after breakfast and prior to lunch -- of white sausages ("weissewurstchen") slathered with the sweet mustard that Mosel River companies also produce.

In Cochem, we visited a 1,000-year-old castle, and walked the streets of a medieval city. We had earlier welcomed on board a German historian who regaled us with a serious, one-hour talk on the recent history of Germany and its current social policies -- one would never witness such an event on the typical ocean cruise.

River cruises are currently a popular option for American travelers, and are found not simply on the Rhine (including the Mosel and Neckar tributaries) and Danube, but in France on the Rhone and Seine; in Russia on the waterways between St. Petersburg and Moscow; and in still other locations. My own cruise was on the moderately-priced Amadeus Waterways (www.amadeuswaterways.com), of which two ships have been chartered for the exclusive use of American visitors over the next two years by Gate 1 Travel (www.gate1travel.com).

Tomorrow, we sail back on the Mosel to the Rhine, and pass through its most picturesque stretch -- an area marked by dozens of castles and by still more hillside vineyards slanting downward to the water of this world-famous river. On ships staffed entirely by Europeans, featuring a classic European cuisine, and determined to present a uniquely European vision, the European river cruise has become a major new method by which Americans pay visits to the Old World.

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As mentioned in previous posts, I'm spending the week on a Rhine river cruise. I will try to post every day, but if I can't I will make sure to fill you in on all the details when I return.

Thanks.

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The cities visited on a European river cruise are never the major capitals (except, perhaps, for the starting or ending cities) but -- in the case of my own Rhine cruise -- historic and well-preserved examples of traditional, mid-sized European life. Few of us used to visit Cologne, Heidelberg or Rudesheim in past years.

There are no casinos on board the European river ships -- and passengers aren't the kind who crave casino life. There are no lip-synched, Las Vegas-style evening shows on the river ships. On my ship, entertainment is by a pianist and singer, and most passengers never hear them, remaining on shore to sample the local nightlife.

There are no bingo games, art auctions, wet t-shirt contests, rock-climbing walls, bowling alleys. There are no children's games (and no children). There is a bar, two computer monitors for e-mail, a tiny shop, an equally tiny fitness room with one treadmill, a beauty parlor. That's it. The ship does not cater to people who rely on outside distractions for their entertainment. Most passengers look forward to the port visits, and attend late evening talks on the next day's stop in the ship's lounge (of which there is one).

On board the river ships, the staff is international -- French, German or Dutch officers, usually younger people from Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria in the middle positions--as on my ship. And although the passenger complement is massively middle-aged, a quarter of them are young people interested in the life and history of Europe.

I share your own sorrow over the drastic drop in the value of the dollar and the group-oriented travels to which we've all been condemned by that decline. And I prefer to overcome the problem by dramatically lowering the category of the accommodations I use for a European visit -- and thus off-setting the poor value of the dollar.

But if you're determined to enjoy all the creature comforts on your travels in Europe, you couldn't do better than on a European river cruise.

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At a typical price of $1,699 per person for seven nights, including round-trip airfare from the United States, the all-inclusive European river cruise along the Rhine or the Danube is fast becoming the top travel hit of 2008. My own current cruise of the Rhine, starting in Amsterdam (at the Rhine canal) and going to Cologne, Cochem, Rüdesheim, Heidelberg, Strasbourg and ending in Basel, Switzerland, is sold out with American travelers convinced they have overcome the poor present value of the U.S. dollar.

All the river cruise lines -- Amadeus Waterways, Peter Deilmann, Uniworld and others -- are reporting equally high sales.

Although we passengers have all had to change some dollars into Euros for tips to the riverboat staff, we have otherwise spent very little beyond the basic cost of the cruise and airfare (U.S. east coast to Amsterdam, and from Basel back to the east coast). Our lodgings are in comfortable cabins aboard the ship, and two of our daily meals are a giant buffet breakfast aboard the ship and an equally massive sit-down dinner of near-gourmet level prepared by a surprisingly-accomplished ship chef and his staff. Some of us have not even had the appetite to buy a sandwich lunch on shore.

I will not pretend that seeing Europe in this fashion is a fully satisfying alternative to the kind of trips we used to enjoy when the dollar was king. But the European river cruise has some plus points.

You stop every day, usually for the entire day, in an historic European city in which the river boat ties up very near to the center of town, and not -- as in some ocean cruises -- far out to sea or miles from the city. Although the riverboat tries hard to sell you optional land excursions by motorcoach, and many passengers buy them, I've had no difficulty simply wandering into the center of town just a short walk away. And there I've passed the day in more or less the same way as in earlier years.

Unlike an ocean cruise aboard one of those new, 3,000-passenger sea monsters, the river cruiseships do not inundate the cities at which they stop. The typical rivership carries 140 passengers -- scarcely ever more than that -- and its presence in town is scarcely noticed by inhabitants.

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You can stay at a working European farm for far less than the cost of a hotel. It's called Agritourism, and it's a booming part of the European scene that is, sadly, seldom used by Americans. For as little as $30 to $70, two persons can get a comfortably rustic room in the farmhouse itself or in a converted outbuilding. Breakfast -- of the heartiest, freshest farmers' variety -- is almost always included, and you can often get inexpensive, rib-sticking dinners as well.

Some agritourisms invite guests to try their hand at agriculture -- a highlight of my (then five-year-old) granddaughter Veronica's farm-stay trip to Ireland a few years ago was getting to gather the eggs from the chicken coop each morning.
While there are only a few central sources of agriturismi, the website of the European Federation for Farm and Village Tourism (www.eurogites.com) links to about 20 official agritourism organizations around Europe, and the independent website BeyondHotels.Net (www.beyondhotels.net) has a section on agritourism with more than 50 links to resources in various European countries. Among these are: www.bienvenue-a-la-ferme.com (France); www.irishfarmholidays.com (Ireland); www.terranostra.it, www.turismoverde.it, and www.agriturist.it (all Italy); and www.farmstayuk.co.uk (the United Kingdom).

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How real is the advice of some travel writers to use the convents and monasteries of Europe for your lodgings? Very real, indeed. A great many monastic orders in Europe take vows of hospitality in place of poverty, and accommodate visitors for a token fee of $10 to $40 a night -- sometimes even for free.

The freebies, of course, are found at only a small number of monasteries, traditionally the more isolated ones in the countryside, where you stay in a monastic cell on a kind of personal religious retreat. At one of these, you are expected to remain in place for at least three days, following the monastery's rules, eating with the monks, and attending mass several times a day.

More to the speed of most tourists are the religious hospices run by convents. These are often set up as guesthouses for pilgrims and, as a result, are concentrated in such pilgrimage locations as Rome, Assisi and Lourdes -- though you can find hospices associated with major churches in most other big cities. Here, the rules tend to be less rigid (at most there might be a curfew), though showing a healthy amount of respect is always wise. Decor is monastically simple: a plain bed, perhaps a desk, and a crucifix on the wall. Rates range from $20 to $40, but can be higher at a few places (better left avoided).

How do you find them? They're occasionally (but only very occasionally) found on the internet. The American church of Santa Susanna in Rome maintains an excellent Italian list at www.santasusanna.org/comingToRome/convents.html. The religious tour operator Zefiro World will reserve a spot at a few dozen other religious guesthouses (www.go-to-italy.com/English/Religious.htm), though these tend to fall toward the pricier end of the scale.

There is also an excellent series of guidebooks by Eileen Barrish that includes the titles: Lodging in Italy's Monasteries, Lodging in Spain's Monasteries, and Lodging in France's Monasteries (they're in most big bookstores, and online). Two similar and helpful books are Bed and Blessings Italy by Anne and June Walsh, and Europe's Monastery and Convent Guesthouses: A Pilgrim's Travel Guide by Kevin J. Wright.

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For the next week and a half, I will be escorting 142 listeners to my Sunday radio travel show on a cruise of the Rhine, starting in Amsterdam and ending in Basel, Switzerland. Though the boat travels at something like 4 miles an hour, ordinarily a formula for boredom, it stops every day to discharge passengers at a number of historic port cities-- Cologne, Cochem, Rüdesheim, Heidelberg, and Strasbourg -- from which passengers debark to spend the entire day touring the castles, fortifications, and quaint medieval streets of these largely-medieval, largely-German (Strasbourg is half in France) cities. And because one's meals and lodgings are aboard the river boat, for which everyone has paid a very reasonable dollar price, this is supposedly an affordable method of visiting Europe that escapes the appalling current exchange rates of the Euro.

We shall see. And I'll be reporting back to you, assessing whether these wildly-popular river cruises (they're booking like mad) are an acceptable alternative to the standard methods of visiting Europe. Unlike many of the passengers, I will not be going on escorted group excursions ashore, but will simply be wandering, with Roberta, through the historic cities at which our ship, the Amadeus Symphony, stops.

The sacrifices I make for readers of this blog! The hardships I endure!

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