Narrator
Welcome to the luxury travel podcast where you will discover information on luxury travel right around the world. And hear amazing stories, tips and secrets from experts and luxury world travelers. Please fasten your seat belt low and tight and remain seated for the show. Now here’s your luxury travel Captain Allen Suss.
Allen Suss
Welcome, everyone. This is Allen Suss from TravelManagers Australia, The River Cruise Expert, speaking today with Laura Stone, Key Partnership Manager for Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia. of Cruise Traveller. Hello, Laura.
Laura Stone
Hi, Allen, how are you?
Allen Suss
I am good, good good in this lockdown city of Melbourne, but otherwise, great, we know this is going to finish, and then we’ll all be able to travel around the world. That is so exciting. So sorry, I cannot wait to get out and about. Perhaps just give a little bit of an introduction about yourself and how you got into travel
Certainly, certainly. So I have been in the travel industry for 15 odd years now. I started doing a course back when I was younger, I won’t tell you how young on the travel industry, and from that, I fell in love and got a job straight out of college and went into the wholesale industry in travel and never left.
That sounds pretty good to me. And but that sounds like a story of a lot of people in the travel industry. They,
Laura Stone
Yeah,
Allen Suss
Leave school, do a little bit of study, and then get involved in the travel industry with. Okay. And then they do a lot of travel themselves, which is also about that.
Laura Stone
Yeah, exactly. And how could you not love this industry? Talking about dream holidays around the world? You can’t get much better
Allen Suss
Today? Yeah, of course not. Today we are going to talk about river cruising in America for singles. And that sounds pretty good to me.
But what can you tell the listeners about being a single and traveling on a river cruise with the American Queen voyages?
Laura Stone
Yes. So with American Queen voyages, you’ve got so many options, really, the cities that we travel through, and start from really large cities like New Orleans, all the way to smaller cities that you can travel in and out of Memphis, which is a very great city. It’s still a larger city, but it’s still amazing for nightlife and culture and cuisine.
So you’ve got a lot to experience along these waters in America. Now when we talk of river cruising in America, we’re referring to the Mississippi River cruising experience. And then it can also go up into Tennessee, Ohio, and it’s very quite diverse within the Mississippi Delta. So you’ve got great experiences there. There’s a lot of nightlife on board the vessels as well as off-board. And, you’ve just got a great experience with lots of really fun and warm people to meet and greet you the whole way through.
Allen Suss
Okay, so I’m a single; I’m going on a cruise, and I’m traveling from Australia. Tell me, what happens?
Laura Stone
What can you expect so on board and the experience that you would receive? You’ve got options of single cabins on board. So they’re there. So there’s only one that doesn’t have single cabins. But you’ve got the opportunity to have your own cabin there at a discounted rate. Or you can hire one of the double share rooms all to yourself, whichever you prefer.
Onboard, you’ve got beautiful dining experiences where you’re sitting eight to 10 passengers to a table and then mixed every night. So you’ll get to meet new people each night. You’re traveling with us, which is great with the shore excursions because these vessels are smaller and more intimate. You get to know the people and the crew that you’re working and cruising with here. So you do have that little bit more of an intimate experience onboard.
When you’re going on your shore excursions, we’ve got a hop-on hop-off bus in each city that will take you to multiple different options actually to explore and experience. And then, at the evening, you’ll come back on board and be greeted by our beautiful crew onboard. So nice experience in the evening. You’ve got a cocktail hour before dinner, and then you go in for your dinner and then they’ve got entertainment after that as well. So, lovely.
Allen Suss
Right, here we talk about the food; what sort of food is presented?
Laura Stone
So, throughout they do try a different culinary experience, it always will have your local cuisine on board. So in the deep south, you’ve got your real Creole experience. So you’ve got your Gumbo, you’ll have your Cajun Spice Chicken, yeah, lots of beautiful, homey, earthy meals that you would experience back in the day, really cultural there.
But then you’ve also got your standard American dishes where you might just have a steak and salad, or you might have a burger. Each night you will find something different on the menu to try. But then you’ve also got your standard meals, which is nice creature comfort home-cooked meals as well.
Allen Suss
Sounds pretty yummy to me.
Laura Stone
Yeah, delicious.
Allen Suss
Sitting on a table with a mixed group of people is, and you’re single is really, is a great way to be sitting at a dinner. I remember when I was traveling overseas and, and sitting with other people, it was the you know, you just you’re meeting people from all over the world, or in my case, I was all over the US. And it was terribly interesting to speak to them. Anyhow, that’s something different, and that’s something. What, what sort of nightlife is there?
Laura Stone
So onboard each night, they will generally do have different themes to their music. It’s not so much a dress up and a theme, etc. It’s very low key, dress how you will at evening, they’ll do a little person performance for you in the theater room, where they’ll do say, for example, they might do jazz night where they’ll just play their favorite jazz music, or they might do I’m trying to think of one of the other beautiful events that I experienced on board, or they did songs from movies. So they picked up all the different songs they had from movies, and they performed those for us throughout the evening.
Really stunning, really beautiful, intimate experience because they’re not massive stage shows, but they are of that quality. It’s just, yeah, it’s a great intimate vibe. And then afterwards, you’re always encouraged to get up and dance with them and mingle and that sort of thing as well, which is also good for their singles to be able to meet new people on the dance floor as well and have a really good night.
Allen Suss
Yeah, well, it sounds good. Great. What do you, I was just thinking about the nightlife and the singing and all the rest of it. When it comes to touring, during the day, what sort of tours do people do have a different tour every day and or what happens with touring?
Laura Stone
Yes, so each day, you’re in a different port, which is really great. The first, for example, if you’re going from New Orleans, or one of the very first stops you’ll make is to Nottoway Plantation, with exclusive rights to American Queen Voyages. And this is one of those beautiful American plantation homes that you expect to see from a dream really, that they talk all about the black slavery in the history of the plantation, and how it all came about back in the day, and how it evolved into what it is today, which is really amazing to hear that history of how things used to be, and see all the ins and outs of these beautiful plantation homes that have been completely emptied and left for you to explore on your own, which is amazing. So that was really beautiful.
From there, you do head up through a lot of history, like the cotton plantations. So how they actually made cotton, you’ll be able to see how they work, the cotton in the machines and how that all evolved, what their main income was, and how that all basically evolved for them along the plantation route. You’ll also see very small country towns with a lot of the black rights history coming through each of the towns and how that all evolved.
Then you’ve also got Mark Twain and his history along the river as well so you’ll hear all about Huckleberry Finn and the stories and where he wrote them and how that all evolved as well. So really beautiful, beautiful stories along the river. The actual scenery is very different as you progress through the river as well, so you’re getting vast, vast expansive waters with beautiful low scenery and then going up into beautiful mountainous ranges on the Upper Mississippi.
Allen Suss
Right okay. The river, the river itself or the rivers because you have a number of rivers tell about have rough waters Do you have rough sailings or that doesn’t occur on rivers at all?
Laura Stone
In a very smooth, it’s very smooth waters. I didn’t even notice I was on the water for the majority of the time. It’s very smooth, the paddlewheel. I felt that it was very therapeutic; when you’re outside, you can hear it splashing the water really beautifully and therapeutic.
In your room, you can’t hear it at all. It might be a slow hum if you towards the back of the vessel where the paddle wheel is. But otherwise, it’s just really nice and quiet—these serene surroundings of the very low mountain range along the Mississippi. You don’t really say too many. Sorry.
Allen Suss
No, no, I was just going to say these days. Wi-Fi is extremely important. Is there any charge for using Wi-Fi on the riverboat?
Laura Stone
No, no, I charge it all included in your charge.
Allen Suss
The other thing I’ve just come across is that smartphones are becoming much more important. In one, when one travels especially you got to show COVID certificates and all sorts of other things. Are they easy enough to use? In the US? If you’re traveling from Australia? What do you think?
Laura Stone
I think it is. It’s getting more and more so, and I think because we are needing to rely on them so much more, our providers are making that a little bit more easy and streamlined. So if you already have a smartphone, you’re used to using it, you can either turn on your roaming with your provider, or if you’re going overseas for a while, you can get a US SIM card and put that in your phone. There’s multiple ways of going about it.
But yeah, definitely, certainly easy. And I find that I mean, even if you’re not wanting to turn your roaming onboard because the Wi-Fi is so good, you can just turn your Wi-Fi on, turn your airplane mode on, and you can actually just use your W-Fi in that respect. So I found that really works well.
Allen Suss
Yeah, but things like WhatsApp and zoom and all these other apps that are now available, you almost don’t need to use it you don’t even use need to use a mobile provider like Telstra or any of the other providers, you can almost get away with it not costing you anything just using the
Laura Stone
Correct. Yeah, as long as you’ve got a good Wi-Fi provider over, that’s it.
Allen Suss
That’s very important. Now there is one more thing that I would like to ask you, and that is, if you’re going on a cruise, and have we discussed the food yet? Have we discussed the food? I know the cabins as well as the food.
Laura Stone
Food in the cabin and food, they’ve got food grazing all throughout the day, you’ve got multiple dining onboard all of our their thoughts, so there’s always something to eat. And you also have which I have forgotten to mention to you, Allen, which is very much warms my heart every time I think about it. So sometimes you’re not; you might not be up before your short excursion to go in and have your breakfast, sit down meal etc. if you’re wanting to because they don’t have the full buffet. It is literally an ala carte dining experience.
So you do go in you order your meal, etc. And then you eat, and then you go on your shore excursions throughout the day, which we’ve got set through previously. Then, if you don’t get up early, and you miss your ala carte dining experience, they’ve actually got at the front of the vessel, a what I will call, trying to think of the right wording for it, but it’s kind of like a grazing area. So they’ll always have fruit in there, they’ll have home-baked cookies, nicely warmed popcorn machine, they’ll have an ice cream machine, tea, coffee, etc., in there. And if you are just wanting to jump in, then grab a piece of fruit and a bikie. And then your coffee, you can just run out the door and go.
So that’s always good to me. I like that because sometimes that you know, especially with jetlag and things like that, you may not want to wake up early in the morning, so you can just grab something and go, which is great. But onboard dining, yes, you’ve got that whole Creole experience a very Southern charm, as well as your mixed American foods into that as well. And multicultural foods that you can experience onboard. So that’s beautiful. Yes.
Allen Suss
So you would recommend American Queen Voyages for singles?
Laura Stone
I would. I would because you always, I mean, I find everyone’s very friendly onboard, from my experience. I actually went on my own, for work. And as soon as I walked on board, everyone was like, Oh, you sound Australian. Where are you from? Blah, blah, they always come up and talk to you. They’re all very friendly. You sit down at the table, and you’ve made ten best friends that night. And then the next night, you might sit on a different table and make another ten best friends. I feel it’s a great experience. I always feel very safe and very warm and inviting. Definitely.
Allen Suss
I’ve got. Okay, thank you very much. That brings us to the end of this podcast. And if you have any questions, on river cruising, in particular American Queen Voyages. Send the questions to me, allen.suss@ travelmanagers.com.au, if you need an experienced travel agent to help you with your next river cruise, call or email me. Today I want to thank Laura Stone from Cruise Traveller for joining me in a podcast today. This is Allen Suss from TravelManagers Australia, the River Cruise Expert until the next podcast. Thank you, Laura.
Laura Stone
Thank you very much, Allen Bye.
Allen Suss
Bye. I hope that you have enjoyed this into my special guest today, traveling and even experienced travel agent to help you book your trip. Call me directly on 0433203713 and as always, be on the lookout for our next luxury travel podcast episode. This is Allen Suss of TravelManagers Australia, wishing you a wonderful day.
