Riviera Travel
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Duoro River cruise and Salamanca
Our cruise was on the newly built Riviera Rose. Our room was on the 2nd level towards the rear. The bathroom and shower in particular were good but the room was small compared to other rooms as we had no room for a chair near the window. The ship was moored at Porto with a very steep gangplank making it difficult for the less able to board the ship. Breakfast was a bit of a bun fight with a very small buffet area which got crowded with people trying to find what they wanted. The food on board was average with the fish meals in particular being poor and served the sloppiest piece of halibut ever seen. There is a lot of bus travel to see the included sights with the longest being to Salamanca a 2 hour journey each way. The bus did have a toilet on board but was out of use and we had to stop at a roadside garage for someone to use the toilet. On arrival at Salamanca around 100 of us were then led 500 meters to a hotel public area to use the bathrooms. There was one door that led to 2 bathrooms, chaos. Salamanca is a beautiful city but the main sights are reached by steps, steep inclines and cobblestone paths. Fortunately no problem for me but many people struggled. For lunch we had to go back down the hill to the original hotel where in a modern conference room with no ambiance there was a very poor quality buffet "Tapas" and a flamenco show. While moored at Pinhao we enjoyed our own walk around the village but for lunch we were driven over an hour to a "beautiful" Quinta for lunch. On arrival it was difficult to park as there were already busses there from other tour companies. We were led into a conference type room where we were greeted by a guy on the accordion and then served a very average lunch of fatty pork and stringy beef. We were given advice on how much we should tip during the cruise and given envelopes to put the tips in. If we had followed the "advice" we would have given £200 in tips yet on the cabin TV information page it stated that your holiday cost included all tips. All in all this was an arduous trip with too much bus travel and little end product and travellers should have been pre warned of the need to be physically fit. If this had been our first river cruise it would have been our last.