American Empress Review

We had a wonderful time!  We would do it again in a heartbeat if we could!  The last day on the veranda I was so sad that it was over.  But, I was glad to be going home.

Our stateroom was great.  The bed was extremely comfortable.  The young lady who cleaned our room and did the turndown every night, Tra, was very sweet.  We loved the veranda and spent a lot of time out there watching the scenery.

The food was great!  We ate in both the Astoria Dining Room and the River View Grill.  I think we may have missed one meal when we were in Astoria visiting the Sunday Market.  BTW Astoria was great.  I’d really like to visit there again.  The man at the River Grill was very nice and very helpful.  As was Shawn who was in charge of the prime rib every night.  We really liked the prime rib.

The entertainment was a lot of fun, too.  Greg the Cruise Director is extremely talented.  We looked forward to his shows every night.  I really like his one-man Broadway show.  His wife Lindy did a guest show where she sang Broadway and Opera.  That was great too!  It really made me wish our daughters were there.  They both sing and have performed as well (in High School).  Our son would have liked his jokes.  He was funny.  He also did the trivia most days, I even tied once for the win.  He also did the bingo game.  That was fun.  I’ve never done that before.  I lost, but it was fun.

Bob the piano player was very entertaining.  He performed with the quartet sometimes and always performed in the Paddle Wheel Lounge.  We really enjoyed ending out day with a good drink in the lounge listening to Bob and singing along.  BTW, Joy the bartender in the lounge was great!  She makes an awesome martini.  And Nanci really liked her margaritas.

Lawrence the Riverlorian was perfect!  His lectures were very good.  Informative and entertaining.  I knew, or I thought I knew, a lot about Lewis and Clark.  But boy did I learn a lot more!  Nanci said she didn’t remember very much about it from school so she really enjoyed it.  And that’s saying something because she’s not a history buff.  I particularly liked how he would get on the PA system from time to time to call out attention to something we were passing on the river.  He always had good information in his area in the Paddlewheel Lounge about what we were going to see the next day.  And he always did his best to answer questions the guests had.  I asked him about Bigfoot since our son is very interested in such things and he provided us information about that.

April the lady in charge of the shore excursions is one of the sweetest, kindest people I’ve ever met.  She was always smiling and helping people.  I know that couldn’t have been easy but she made it look like it.  I really liked her nightly preview of the next days tours!  The Hop on Hop off bus tours were wonderful!  The local guides made it all mean so much more.  They supplied additional information to what we heard from April and Lawrence.  It was like they had coordinated everything.  We didn’t do any of the extra tours this time, but if we ever get the chance to go back, I think we will.

The Davenport Hotel in Spokane is beautiful!  That was a great way to start the cruise.  I’ve been to several historic hotels and that is one of the most beautiful and architecturally interesting ones I’ve ever seen.  It truly is amazing! Our entire trip really couldn’t have gone any better..

Thanks so much for this!  We truly had a fabulous time!

Todd