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Windstar Cruises
100% From Ordinary
Written by: Dominick A. Miserandino
Photography by: Margherita Miserandino
Windstar Cruises bills itself as, '180 degrees from the ordinary.' Compared to your average cruise line, it certainly is different and outstanding.
Your average cruise ship is now big. Massively big ... somewhere between small cities and Vatican City. Everything on a typical cruise ship is usually considered over the top ... shows, upon food, upon music, upon other stuff.
Windstar is small and intimate. It's the difference between living in the city and living in the country. Well, more like your city apartment and your country townhouse.
But first the name. Yes, it's not a coincidence that "wind" is in the title. The 3 sails on our ship (4 sails on the Wind Surf) certainly stand out. Saying "small," however, usually conjures a negative, so from now on think, "intimate." Forget the small part. Intimate in the sense that when we took a cruise on one of the bigger cruise lines, we didn't know our neighbor; on Windstar, you learn everybody's first and last name inevitably. You make friends even if you don't want to. In fact, we're still keeping touch with some of them.
On a larger ship, you usually sit at a set table at a set time. You might sit with the same couple all week, and you might find them wonderful, or they might bore the hell out of you. On Windstar, you just show up when you want and simply say, "We'd rather eat alone," or "We'll eat with another couple." Each meal can be handled differently. We made some great friends that way.
Speaking of meals, there are three aspects to take note of. One is their midweek barbeque. They go out to the open deck and actually have the fanciest barbeque you've ever seen. Crab legs and lobster tails, steak and lamb ... you get the idea. But since it's a barbeque, it's not so formal as to intimidate you. Henri, the head chef was right there cooking up a storm.
Secondly, I was in love with the food. I know everybody brags about cruise line food, but this was 180 degrees different. (I was challenging myself to see if I could actually use their tagline successfully without sounding corny.) Anyway, the food isn't overly abundant in the "stuff your face sorta way," but it is gourmet different. Again, it's not "What the hell is that they want me to eat?" type of different, but, "I've never tasted that before" type of different. And if you really want a hamburger, I'm sure that they could make it for you.
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Barbeque on the Open Deck | |
Concerning food I should point out, Henri, the head chef, who easily deserves his own story. For example, he wanted to make the aforementioned barbeque go right, and if something was wrong he would stop at nothing to remedy the situation. During the barbeque, he smelled something odd. Okay, it was actually a nauseating smell. It turned out that a garbage barge or something, passed us and left a faint smell in one section of the deck. Henri ran around the deck to investigate, and when he realized it wasn't in his power to fix, he didn't resign himself to inaction. You could see this problem was eating at him. This attention to detail made everybody feel important. He did things like serve his own pasta at lunch. The head chef serving pasta? For him, he just seemed to love people trying his recipes and seeing what they liked.
And point number three regarding the food, almost everybody had the chance to dine with the captain or the doctor, one of his engineers or crew. I warn you, this is an awkward experience at times ... although interesting. At the captain's dinner for example, when they seat you, they separate you from your spouse so you get to know other people at the table. This can be effective, but also a bit nerve wracking. What will you talk about? Where is your spouse who at least will tell you your tie is crooked (sometimes even too frequently)?
Margherita attempted to do this from across the table, but since I didn't understand her, it made me even more paranoid. Anyway, for those who like such events, the intimacy does make a difference.
About intimacy, because it's a small ship, it's easier for it to sail to smaller ports. There is more to the Mediterranean to see than Venice, Nice, Athens and Barcelona. Yes, it stops there too, but it also stops at some of the less common destinations like Corsica, Elba and Cinque Terre. This adds to that "180 degrees from ordinary" feeling.
When we go somewhere, many times we say, "Oh so and so would love it here." It's just instinctual. The second we stepped on this ship, we thought of our friends Anthony and Maria. Anthony is a chef, and Maria likes the beach. Why did we think of the two of them? All you do here is eat gourmet food, go to beaches, and drink wine -- not that this is a bad thing, but it certainly has to be your thing. While it's naturally the type of cruise you can run around and see the world on, it's the type of cruise you are forced to relax on.
How so? It's the little things. The ship, being sail-based, first of all, starts you off on that feeling. The smaller-sized ship lends itself to a "small town" feel as opposed to a big city. They do little things like having a CD player in each room with free CD rentals, and VCRs in each room with free tape rentals. We took advantage of that feature a few nights throughout the week.
We went down to the library and chose a goofy movie to rent that we normally wouldn't rent at home. Over the course of a week, we watched a dozen movies. What was strange, though, was in our normally busy lives, we don't do such things. Now even though we were on a cruise in Europe, we had the time to do so, and we enjoyed the ability and freedom to just relax.
Lastly, there was the cruise itself. I'll detail each of the stops below, but I must warn you when it comes to itineraries: Be careful! On almost every one of our tours, people were cautious and disappointed on what they spent. They felt they spent double to triple what they should have.
To be fair all around, it's a situation of "pay for what you get." If you're looking for convenience, and you're nervous about where you're going, take the tour. If you don't worry about budget, then this is for you.
However, don't go expecting to find a bargain, it's purely convenience and ease of mind. By the 2nd day, even the staff was advising us on the sly not to do the tours. They felt the tours could easily be accomplished on your own, but it was pretty convenient to use the tours.
As you'll read about below in our St. Tropez adventure, even though we didn't speak French, with a bit of improvising, we were able to get to the beach for $4 round trip when the staff even said it would be a $30 cab ride each way.
Before doing any cruise, I would HIGHLY recommend looking up each of the ports, and then after you looked them up, look them up again. Maybe even contact their local CVB or chamber of commerce to see what they think. If you feel comfortable, go on your own. If, however, you feel even a little bit nervous, pay the premium and do a shore excursion.
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Windspirit passing the Windsurf | |
Overall, of all the cruises we've ever taken, the two things that stand out are the relaxation and the food. This was the one cruise we've done where we felt completely at ease and didn't care if we spent every day just watching TV or watching the ports go by. It seemingly oozes relaxation by every nature of the boat. Even in departing, they recommend you take a book from their library for the plane ride home. "If you've read a book, feel free to donate it also to the library."
I'll now go through each of the ports below, one by one, but hopefully my summary gave you a better idea of the gist of Windstar Cruises.
Windstar
Porto Vecchio
Portoferraio
PortoVenere
St. Tropez
Monaco
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