There are holidays that hurry you along, and there are those that persuade you politely but firmly to slow down. A week aboard CroisiEurope’s MS Raymonde, gliding through Belgium’s canals at walking pace, belongs firmly in the latter category.
With just eleven cabins and a crew of five, the Raymonde is less cruise ship than a floating drawing room. The scale encourages conversation, reflection, and, after the first evening, an agreeable familiarity that makes breakfast feel like a reunion of old friends, albeit friends who happen to wake up in a different medieval town each morning.
The itinerary from Halle to Ghent offers a gentle education in Belgian life. This is not sightseeing in the conventional sense, more observation in motion. Churches rise quietly from riverside meadows, cyclists wave from towpaths, and market squares drift into view with the scent of coffee, waffles and ambition.
Bruges
Excursions are optional, but rewarding. There are chocolatiers who take their craft with monk-like seriousness, belfries that remind you Europe once defended itself with bells, and UNESCO-listed towns that appear to have misplaced the 21st century entirely. Between stops, the canal itself provides entertainment: swans glide with professional composure, locks creak open with ceremony, and villagers pause to enquire where exactly you have come from, a question that becomes harder to answer by the day.
On board, the heart of operations is Hans, the ship’s purser, master of announcements, cheese, and gentle mischief. His calls to meals arrive with theatrical timing and a wit honed by years afloat. Cheese presentations become minor performances, and even safety briefings acquire narrative flair. It is hospitality delivered with personality, a rarity in modern travel.
One afternoon brings the Strépy-Thieu boat lift, a feat of engineering that raises the Raymonde 100 metres skyward in a vast steel cradle. For several minutes, you are a hotel suspended in mid-air, Wallonia spread beneath you like a patient watercolour. It is both faintly absurd and quietly magnificent travel at its most improbable.
MS Raymonde Hot Tub
Evenings are civilised affairs. Dinner unfolds with Belgian precision: waterzooi, carbonnade flamande, bread still warm, cheeses that demand respect. Local beers are poured with explanation, not haste. Later, some retreat to the deck’s hot tub, champagne in hand, watching the last light settle across poplar-lined canals. Others linger over coffee, plotting tomorrow’s bicycle ride or the strategic purchase of pralines.
Cabins are compact but elegant, windows framing a constantly changing gallery of farmland, villages and reflections. The true luxury, however, is time. Six nights pass without urgency. By the time Ghent appears, grand and confident at journey’s end, leaving feels faintly premature.
Passengers disembark carrying chocolates, beer, photographs and something less tangible. A memory of travel without strain, without schedules shouted through megaphones, without the tyranny of speed.
In a country celebrated for art, architecture and indulgence, CroisiEurope’s MS Raymonde offers a more subtle pleasure: Belgium revealed not as an itinerary, but as a living landscape best understood from the water slowly, thoughtfully, and preferably with good cheese close at hand.
by John Savage – (c) 2026.
Read Time: 3 minutes.
