AmaKristina

AmaKristina is the ship AmaWaterways named after one of its own founders. Kristin Karst co-owns the company and is its executive vice president; she stood as godmother when the ship was christened at Lahnstein, on the Rhine, on May 10, 2017. Vahali Shipyards in Serbia built her, to the same 443-foot, roughly-38-foot dimensions as the rest of the European fleet, because those are the dimensions the locks allow and no shipowner gets a vote.

She was built for the Rhine and the Moselle. She does not sail either one now.

The move to France

Every departure on her schedule from 2026 through 2028 is Colors of Provence, seven nights on the Rhône, out of Lyon and Arles, the standard version, a Christmas one, and a wine-themed one. AmaWaterways’ own ship page still opens by describing her as a Rhine ship, castled cliffs and all, and then lists nothing but Provence underneath it. The prose has not caught up with the deployment.

This matters more than a line’s marketing copy usually does, because it means a 443-foot hull is now doing the French program that the company used to hand to its shorter boats. The Rhône below Lyon takes her comfortably. The Saône above Lyon, up into Burgundy, is where the 360-foot AmaCello goes instead, and AmaKristina does not follow her there, which is why her weeks are all sevens between Lyon and Arles while AmaCello’s stretch to eleven nights.

One departure on her calendar is listed out of Paris. That is a land package with nights in the capital at the front of it, not a Seine cruise; the ship itself stays on the Rhône.

The least crowded of the standard hulls

Seventy-six staterooms and 152 guests, against 156 on AmaSiena and 162 on AmaReina, all three on an identical hull with the same fifty-one crew. That works out at a shade under three guests per crew member, the best ratio of the three, and about ten fewer people on the sun deck than AmaReina carries.

The cabins go up to 350 sq ft in the suites, and most of the ship has the twin balcony, a French balcony and a step-out veranda in the same room, which is the one thing AmaWaterways does that its competitors mostly do not. The sun deck has a heated pool with a swim-up bar and a walking track. She carries bicycles for riding ashore, which on the flat towpaths of the Rhône valley is genuinely usable, and there is a specialty coffee station, a fitness room, a hair salon and massage service. Dining is the main restaurant and The Chef’s Table.

The elevator reaches the Violin, Cello and Piano decks. It does not reach the sun deck, and on this itinerary (southern France, long light evenings), the sun deck is where you want to be.

Who she suits

Travelers who want Provence at a walking pace. The week runs Lyon to Arles by way of Vienne, Tournon and Tain-l’Hermitage, Viviers and Avignon, which is to say Roman ruins and Rhône vineyards in roughly equal measure. She is the pick of the 443-foot ships for anyone who cares about how many people are aboard, since she carries the fewest of them and the same crew.

She is the wrong ship for anyone who wants the classic river-cruise scenery, the Rhine gorge, the Wachau, a new country every second day. Provence is one country, one river and a short stretch of it, and the ship spends a lot of the week tied up. She is also wrong for a guest expecting the Rhine itinerary her own brochure copy still describes; that has not been her deployment for some time, and it is not coming back on this schedule.