The Barcelona to Lisbon cruise was excellent. The captain and crew were magnificent. The cabin accommodations were comfortable, ship very clean and maintained, excellent dining in the main dining room. The "Veranda" for breakfast and lunch was nice and "American" style buffets and order from menu with "specialty foods" supposedly picked up at our various ports by the chef. Didn't really take advantage of the limited entertainment options although the duos in the two lounge areas were reasonably talented. I found the service to be excellent. I would certainly recommend taking shore excursions bought through Windstar, although I am sure a bit more "priced up" than if you arranged on your own, however, there were advantages to the Windstar coordinated ones including the fact that they were "smaller" groups, compared to an entire "busload" of tourists following on guide around as well as the "sites" that we went to being a smaller group. Also, the buses/tours were geared for the whatever time the ship docked, and accommodated to the yacht's schedule rather than to a tour company predetermined time table. The Windstar tours were totally private tours vs what I would call the standard "commercial tour." Also, the "yacht" being about a 200 passenger ship (it was an older ship reconditioned but nicely done) it could go to places other larger passenger ships could not get into such as going up the river to Seville. Our docking locations were always "front row seat docking," and very convenient to off loading. If any critique, it would be that on several days when our tour had to leave early (they would open lunch earlier at 11:30 and close down breakfast earlier) we were not able to get lunch before needing to be on the bus. Upon return some 4+ hours later, the "Veranda" was closed for lunch and you had to order a lunch or snack through room service. With about 50% of the passengers returning and deluging room service at the same time, the wait for my order was close to an hour when I was told 15-20 minutes. Plus they must have been receiving so many calls at the same time, that it took me several attempts before I got an answer just to place order. I searched out an officer later (spoke to the hotel manager and told him I am sure this is not new situation and my suggestion is to have a snack area set up knowing they'd have a large number of passengers returning who had not had anything to eat since whatever their breakfast time was. He acknowledged but I got the impression that, "I'm hearing this again. Get over it." The availability of small "nosh" snacks in the "Yatch Club" was not nearly adequate to handle the "crush" of hungry returning passengers.

As to the shore excursions themselves, all were rated "excellent" except for one which was good, mainly because the guide was not up to par as to her language skill and knowledge as comparative guides on other shore excursions. I got the impression that Windstar was able to get "top notch" better than average tour guides and they enjoyed being with our much smaller group. Our guide in Malaga was even a docent at the Picasso Museum so when we went there we really got a much better museum guided tour than I think our companion group did who was on the other bus.

The Sail Away was always fun, dramatic, and ceremonial. The Monday night BBQ had excellent food, dancing, and music that kept most passengers engaged for a long time and then those of us who stayed on until close down time of about 11am had a great time. Excellent crew and passenger interaction time. Read more