Our Excellent Return to the Sea – Final

Transition Day
Today is Saturday the 19th, and the whole ship is in transition. About 95% of the passengers have disembarked as they only booked a seven-day cruise ending in Civaateccia. Right now, the whole ship feels very empty as there are only ten cabins, including us, who have booked 14 days. The crew is extremely busy emptying out and cleaning the rooms and generally cleaning the ship. It’s an interesting perspective of what goes on to make a cruise ship ready before new passengers start boarding.

Small Ship
Barb and I are by no means seasoned cruise ship passengers. This cruise on the Windstar line is only the fifth time we’ve both been on a cruise together. It’s uncertain yet how much cruising we’ll do in the future but we do know that we love the small ship format so it’s very possible that we can see ourselves planning a completely different destination sometime in the future. In the lobby of our ship, there is a table of brochures of all of the other destinations that Windstar goes to, no doubt to plant the seed for people to think about their next Windstar cruise.
What we like most about a smaller ship, ours having about 125 passengers, is how easy it is to get to know other passengers and the staff, many of which now refer to us by name. The unique destinations of this cruise were also a major factor in choosing this particular sailing, often going to smaller unique ports and rarely where there were other cruise ships.

Country by Country
When we decided to book this cruise, a great deal of the appeal was the unique destinations that we would be going to and the four countries that we would be visiting. We picked up our ship in the Greek port of Piraeus, and over the subsequent 14 days, we would be stopping at ports in Greece, Italy, France, and Spain, almost always stopping in small ports where we were the only cruise ship at each location.
We had perfect weather for the entire 21 days of our trip, usually wearing shorts during the daytime and then changing to long pants for dinner when it was cooler but never cold. Given that our trip went into later October, we couldn’t have asked for better weather.
Barb and I signed up for several shore excursions to be able to get a feel for each port where we stopped. As the number of passengers on our ship was about 120, none of the shore excursions, even the very popular ones, ever had a large number of people descending on a small town. I think that the most I’d ever seen going on a particular excursion was about 35.

Activities
When we weren’t doing shore excursions or on one of the days at sea, we would just be relaxing in one of the inside or outside lounges, talking to people who we met and having a drink. Sometimes the best part of a vacation is when you’re doing nothing.
Every evening, there were many activities in the main lounge where the singers would either play music or more often lead some activities such as dance lessons and once a week the crew would do a talent show.
When we were looking at the agenda of events when we first got on board we didn’t think that any of these activities sounded like fun but we were completely wrong as all of these events were well done. The fact that we got to know many of the crew and performers made a big difference than if it was just random strangers.

Last Day
I’m writing this last section on Friday the 25th and as I often do it’s the last day before flying home tomorrow. The suitcases are out and we’ve slowly been packing preparing for our departure off the ship early tomorrow. We’ll be arriving in Barcelona tomorrow morning and we’ll transfer to the airport for our return flight.
I commented earlier that historically Barb and I have not been cruise ship enthusiasts. We’re still going to be doing the majority of our travel as self-directed but we both have enjoyed this small-ship format and I can definitely see us doing another similar type of cruise in the future. In fact, this morning we made arrangements to do another cruise with Windstar in 2026. But long before then, we have just 5 more months until we head to Australia.
We’ll be taking a lot of memories home with us from this trip and it’s opened up a lot of new possibilities for future travel.
As always, all of my photos from this trip are posted on my photo website here.
All the best,
Baden

One Comment
Pyrenne & Dave
Well done! See you in March. ❤️❤️