If there was a moment that defined our trip along the Oise river in May, it was on the last night of our six-night/seven-day trip. That evening, at the end of our gala dinner, Charlène Numão, a young Portuguese woman, snuck off to her room, changed clothes and sauntered into the dining room. In the very same venue where she had served us three meals a day and countless glasses of wine, she took the stage.

We were all curious about what was to happen next. “I could not let you come all this way without giving you something from my country,” Charlène announced. With a glass of port in her hand and donning a black Portuguese frock with brightly colored embroidered floral designs, she took a moment to explain that she would perform Fado.

Fado is a style of Portuguese music that, in Charlène‘s version, expressed sadness about loved ones leaving. Charlène’s performance was so heartfelt and so beautiful that it moved many in the room to tears. I certainly felt a lump in my throat as I looked across the room watching a few tender souls dabbing at their cheeks to wipe away tears with their napkins.

What Charlène gave us that evening gets to the very heart of what CroisiEurope’s barge trips are all about. They are intimate and enriching experiences that larger vessels have a hard time replicating simply by virtue of the number of guests that the larger ships carry. With a maximum capacity of 22, CroisiEurope’s barges function like living rooms rather than floating hotels, as river cruise vessels are often referred to. Both types of travel have their places, of course, but they are vastly different.

Size Matters, Even Among Small Vessels

That was last week. As I write these words, I am on a river cruise on the Seine. Having such a fresh perspective, I am acutely aware that the difference between travel on a river cruise vessel and a barge is as different as an apple is from an orange. Our ship, AmaLyra, is carrying 102 guests, nearly five times as many guests as our barge carried last week.

AmaLyra features 71 staterooms with a guest capacity of 140. The ship is manned by 45 crew. Only midway through the voyage, my experience thus far has been exceptional. That’s partly because I am part of a Backroads group, about 20 of us, and our group size resembles that of the barge. I’ll have a report on my Backroads experience next week.

Our barge, CroisiEurope’s Raymonde, carried 20 guests in 11 staterooms (two of us were traveling solo). I knew everyone, guests and crew, by name on the first day. On AmaLyra, by contrast, I met people, introduced myself, and later they would pass as if they had never met me. That’s understandable with 147 new faces (guests and crew combined).

On the barge, guests typically get to know each other quickly. They engage in conversations and share lots of laughs. I’ve hosted 11 barge trips since 2015, which means I’ve traveled with a couple hundred guests. Simply by virtue of the fact that they chose the barge suggests there is some commonality among the guests.

Not all couples bond with the others on the barge. Understandably, barging isn’t for everyone. It’s best suited for those who enjoy interacting with others. Most of the people who have traveled with me remain friends with one another long after the trips ends. Some, however, turn out to be one-time bargers. My significant other isn’t a fan of barging because she’s an introvert. She eschews small talk. Lunches and dinners – as well as the conversations that go along with those – can be long and mentally taxing, but few can resist taking a seat at the table because the cuisine rivals Michelin-starred dining.

I encourage my guests to leave the table early if they tire of talking (few do), and to sit with others, even to the point of separating couples. I wish that barges had alternative dining options, even if it were only sandwiches in the lounge for those who want to skip lunch or dinner. But I don’t know how many people could resist the dining room’s lure. 

Plus, I rarely hear anyone complain about the meals being too long. Nor do I hear criticisms about too much time with others. Rather, I find that people enjoy the connections, and many end up telling me that the barge was one of their best travel experiences.

My Shift To Smaller & Smaller Vessels

I began my career more than three decades ago on large ships. As time passed, I moved from big ships to mid-sized ships to small ships to even smaller expedition ships to river cruises and finally, barges. I often joke that my next adventures will be on canoes. Expedition and river ships still rank way up there for me, but for their intimacy, barge trips are tops. 

Yes, the staterooms are small-ish by river cruise and ocean cruise standards. But for me, the staterooms are sufficiently sized, well-designed and with bathrooms that are disproportionally large. There’s good storage and the beds are comfortable. To give you an idea about the stateroom size, below is a video that I filmed on one of CroisiEurope’s barges.

Barging Rivers vs. Barging Canals

Months before embarkation, I had tempered guest expectations. “We’re not barging on a canal,” I said. “We won’t have the frequent locks and towpaths so that we can get off the barge to walk (or bike) along the canals.”

On my most recent trip, we passed through 11 locks over 121 miles. Clearly, the Oise was nothing like the canal cruises I had done in Burgundy or Alsace. In Alsace, from Legarde to Strasbourg, a distance covering only 65 miles, we passed 41 locks, transited two tunnels and one “inclined plane,” an elevator of sorts for barges and boats. During that trip, we often stepped off the barge at the locks to stretch our legs, sometimes strolling or pedaling alongside the canal for hours before returning to the barge at a lock downstream.

Those moments of getting off at the locks, however, were hardly missed last week, as the Oise repeatedly delivered exceptional destinations and experiences along the way.

Though I had my doubts, CroisiEurope’s program on the Oise river exceeded expectations. That was the shared sentiment from the majority of the 20 guests on our voyage from Paris. Indeed, it is hard to think of criticisms of this itinerary. One disappointment was that we had all looked forward to cruising through Paris the evening of embarkation. Suzy, our delightful cruise manager, explained that because of excess rains, the Seine was not safe for us to navigate upstream through the city. We were, however, moored with a picture-perfect view of the Eiffel Tower, not a bad consolation prize.

Leaving Paris, we traveled to Bougival, where we visited Malmaison, the palatial home of Empress Joséphine de Beauharnais as well as Napoleon’s last residence in France. The artist Claude Monet lived and painted in Bougival.

It would be hard to name a favorite experience ashore, but I particularly enjoyed our overnight in Auvers-sur-Oise. One of the many highlights here was learning about the life and death of Vincent Van Gogh. The post-Impressionist artist lived here before taking his life with a gun at age 37. He’s buried in the cemetery in Auvers-sur-Oise beside his brother Theo.

Auvers attracted the Impressionist painters because of its beauty, and with the overnight in the city center, we were able to explore quite a bit of that beauty. Even though Van Gogh only spent two months in Auvers, he was inspired to create 70 paintings. We visited some of the spots where he brush-stroked his canvasses.

A few days later, we spent part of one afternoon learning to make Chantilly, which puts whipped cream to shame. Our instructor was from La Confrérie Des Chevaliers Fouetteurs De La Crème Chantilly or The Chantilly Cream Whipping Knightly Brotherhood (who knew there was such an organization?) Three in our group demonstrated the making of chantilly with guidance from our instructor. In a surprise moment, to show how thick the cream had become after whipping, the instructor picked up a pan and turned it upside down over one of the participant’s heads. Not a speck fell from the pan. The three were awarded diplomas for their newly acquired skill. 

The next morning we visited the Chateau de Chantilly, a vast estate that dates back to the 1300s. Although we spent a couple of hours exploring the interior, a few in our group wished for a longer stay.

One of our last stops was in Compiègne, where Joan of Arc was captured. Our visits included the Château de Compiègne and the Clairière de l’Armistice (the Armistice Memorial). CroisiEurope’s guides were exceptional in all of the places we visited. Our complete itinerary can be found here. 

You could stay in Paris and visit many of the places that we visited on our barge Raymonde, but you wouldn’t have the same experience, because the sites and attractions were not the stars of the show. It was the barge itself, the dining and the crew. 

At the end of our seven-day/six-night trip along the Oise, all five of the crew stood on the dock waving as our bus prepared to take us back to Paris. As the others were waving and blowing kisses, Charlène turned her back to us for a moment. She put a tissue to her eyes, drying tears. Her eyes were red and puffy when she turned back toward us to wave goodbye. It was the end of a beautiful adventure, one that gave us memories – and friendships – that will not soon be forgotten.