AmaSiena

AmaSiena is the newest of AmaWaterways’ 443-foot European ships in this group and the one with the strangest first year. Vahali Shipyards in Serbia finished her in 2020. She had been announced in 2019 for a debut on July 22 of that year, with Debbie Fiorino named as godmother and a christening penciled in for mid-August. Neither happened. River cruising in Europe shut down, and a completed ship sat waiting. Her inauguration finally came in August 2021, and she was christened at Lahnstein on the Rhine on the first of September, thirteen months behind schedule.

The practical result is a ship whose interiors were specified in 2019 and whose career began in 2021, which is why she carries a 2021 build year on this site and a 2020 one on some others. Both are defensible; neither is wrong.

Fewer cabins, bigger cabins

She is the same 443 feet and roughly 38 feet as every other European ship in the fleet, because the locks between the Rhine and the Danube do not negotiate. What changed on this generation is the interior arithmetic. AmaSiena has seventy-eight staterooms and 156 guests where AmaReina, seven years older, fits eighty-one and 162 into the same hull. There are five stateroom grades rather than nine, and they are simpler: 155 and 170 sq ft at the bottom, a 210 sq ft twin-balcony room, 235 sq ft above that, and suites at 350, fifty square feet more suite than the older ships offer.

Most rooms have the twin balcony, one French and one step-out. The sun deck has a heated pool with a swim-up bar, a walking track and fitness classes; the elevator serves the Violin, Cello and Piano decks and stops below the sun deck, which is one deck better than the older 360-foot hulls manage. Dining is the main restaurant plus The Chef’s Table, the glass-walled kitchen doing a multi-course menu.

Where she actually sails

The Rhine, almost entirely, between Basel and Amsterdam. Her staple is Captivating Rhine at seven nights, and her schedule is weighted heavily toward Basel; the great majority of her departures start there rather than at the Dutch end.

The bookable inventory here opens in October 2026 and runs to the end of 2028, and the winter half of it is the Christmas market program: Christmas Markets on the Rhine and Captivating Rhine: Taste of Christmas, the same route worked in December, when the Rhine towns put their markets in the squares and the gorge is cold, dark by four, and considerably less crowded. Fourteen-night departures appear alongside the sevens, pairing two consecutive weeks.

She is rated for the Rhine, the Main, the Moselle and the Danube, so a redeployment is possible in a way it is not for the Bordeaux and Magdalena ships. As of now she does not use that range; she runs the Rhine.

Who she suits

Anyone who wants the newest available version of the standard European river ship without paying for a suite: the mid-grade cabins on this generation are larger than the equivalent grades on hulls ten years older, and there are fewer people aboard to share the sun deck with. The Christmas market sailings are the strongest reason to pick her specifically.

She is a poor fit for anyone booking the next few months, since nothing on her schedule here starts before October 2026. She is wrong for a guest who needs the ship to entertain them, because the Rhine week is built around the towns and the gorge and the evening program is a lounge and a pianist. And she is the wrong ship if you want variety of scenery in one week: this is one river from end to end, and the same castle silhouette several times over.