A Christmas markets cruise with my friend of 50 years

As 11-year-old schoolgirls, Jacquie Elliott and I went on our first Christmas shopping trip to the local Woolworth’s to buy Lily of the Valley bath cubes and soap for our favourite aunts. Once we had Saturday jobs our finances improved so we progressed to choosing vinyl records and Brut aftershave for our boyfriends.

We pounded along Oxford Street after starting full-time work and over the years of hatches, matches and dispatches we have tried to buy our Christmas gifts somewhere different every year – from Oxford to Edinburgh, Paris and New York, we’ve hit the shops.

To celebrate our 50 years of friendship, the European Christmas markets were at the top of our shopping list and we opted for a Uniworld river cruise on the Rhine.

After the flight from London Gatwick to Basel, in Switzerland, a chauffeur was waiting at the airport and within 15 minutes we were at the quayside watching the crew carrying our cases onto SS Antoinette. 

With the captain and cruise director among the welcoming party, we stepped straight into Christmas – a foyer dressed in festive decorations complete with a gingerbread house and vases of giant white amaryllis lilies, set off by a twinkling 10-foot Strauss Baccarat chandelier dripping with sapphire blue crystals.

Our stateroom was equally inviting, decked out in classic blue and white Lazy Sunday Toile de Jouy fabric on the walls with matching curtains, twin handcrafted Savoir beds with white embroidered linen adding more comfort and a decent-sized white marble shower room with Asprey amenities.