For reasons too complicated to explain, I found myself in the German town of Coburg last December. It’s a pretty place and barely 40 minutes drive from the Main River but you can’t visit it on any cruises, rivers or otherwise (which is a shame but that is another story).
So, why am I telling you this? As some might guess from the name, this was the family seat of Albert, the Saxe-Coburg prince who married Queen Victoria and whose great, great, great grandson King Charles III is about to be crowned in Westminster Abbey.
It got me thinking, it would be fun to see how many places you can visit on a cruise that have a connection with the King. Given his family’s roots, Germany seems a good place to start - especially the capital, Berlin, which had the honour of hosting the King and Queen on their first overseas state visit.
It might be an unlikely candidate given it is a long way from the sea but you can visit on a cruise. This summer, Oceania Cruises’ Baltic voyages have tours from the seaside town of Wanemunde. It’s a great introduction to the city that was once the symbol of a divided Europe.
There’s no Berlin on APT Cruising’s Magnificent Europe river cruise from Amsterdam to Budapest. Still, you see a lot of Germany (there are calls into nine German towns and cities alone) and get bonus points for Amsterdam and Budapest, which the King visited in September 1984 and May 2000 respectively.
Delve into Scandinavia’s Viking history on Fred. Olsen Cruise Lines’ voyage from Rosyth in August and you’ll not only be following in the footsteps of Charles on a call into Oslo (he was there in March 2012 as part of a grand tour of Scandinavia) but sailing on Balmoral, a ship named after his Scottish castle. The royal tour also stopped in Bergen, where Hurtigruten’s Norwegian coastal voyages start and end. Do one of those and that’s another on the list.
For a right royal bonanza, a 22-day Venice to Istanbul cruise with Oceania Cruises in October has a day in Athens, three in Israel and an overnight in Istanbul. In Athens in May 2018, King Charles III laid a wreath at the Memorial of the Unknown Soldier, in Israel in January 2020, he visited the tomb of his grandmother, Princess Alice of Greece and Denmark, on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem and in 2015, he visited Gallipoli for the cemetery of the WWI landings.
The King has certainly stacked up the Air Miles, often with barely a break. He visited the pyramids and Sphinx in Cairo in November 2021 (which you can do on Uniworld River Cruises’ Splendours of Egypt and the Nile River cruise) and soon after was in Barbados, to oversee the moment the Caribbean island switched from having the Queen as head of state to becoming a republic. You can have two days in Barbados on 14-night voyages round trip from Antigua on P&O Cruises' new ship Arvia this winter.
Australia has been a Royal tour favourite over the years, most memorably in March and April 1983m when Charles visited with a nine-month-old Prince William and visited Sydney, Hobart in Tasmania, Adelaide, Melbourne and Perth - all places Holland America Line’s Westerdam is calling into on an epic circumnavigation of Australia in November 2024 (there are also calls into Brisbane and Darwin, and even a detour to Indonesia, to the island home of the Komodo dragons).
The Prince of Wales was in Tokyo in November 1990 to attend Emperor Akihito’s accession to the Japanese throne and in New York in March 1997 to visit UN headquarters - places you can visit respectively with Princess Cruises and Cunard. He also visited Doha before Qatar made a name for itself as the host of the FIFA World Cup. I was there last year and it is an interesting place, with amazing architecture and fun dune-bashing tours in the desert. You can find out more by adding a few days in Doha to the start or end of Silversea cruises from the city in late 2024.
