Excursions

Just booked our first cruise on Windstar. We're doing a Portugal/Spain itinerary in May, 2018. Would appreciate any thoughts on Windstar's excursions. I normally book private tours or join a small group through the roll call because I haven't given high marks to ship excursions on other cruise lines. However, since this will be our first cruise on Windstar, thought I'd ask for the opinions of other cruisers who have taken Windstar excursions!

Just booked our first cruise on Windstar. We're doing a Portugal/Spain itinerary in May, 2018. Would appreciate any thoughts on Windstar's excursions. I normally book private tours or join a small group through the roll call because I haven't given high marks to ship excursions on other cruise lines. However, since this will be our first cruise on Windstar, thought I'd ask for the opinions of other cruisers who have taken Windstar excursions!

Took my first Windstar cruise aboard The Spirit, out of Tahiti, August 24th. The Spirit is, I believe, their smallest vessel with only 140 passengers on this cruise. Windstar was however, by my standards, quite outstanding. Food and service was phenomenal and most friendly staff/crew of any ship I've been on.

I also usually do private excursions. On this particular cruise, I booked four (4) private tours but also signed up for two excursions from Windstar. I was very pleased with the Windstar tours: fair price, great tour leaders, small groups of only 10-12 others on each tour.

I realize this might only pertain to the South Pacific itinerary that I took but if nothing else, I'm sure you're going to enjoy Windstar!

We are going to book the Lisbon-Barcelona for September 2018. We have sailed on two other Wind Star cruises and have done a mixture of ship and private tours. With the exception of one ship tour we have enjoyed all of them. I haven't really started looking too hard at this trip yet.

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I do know that in Tahiti Windstar contracts with local tour operators, and I would guess that is the same everywhere else as well. Based on our recent experience, you may find a great local tour operator on TripAdvisor and try to book with them directly,only to be told that you'll have to book the tour through Windstar because they are their contracted tour operator for that port. Looks like they do tend to choose good tour providers, though.

There are three Windstar itineraries in 2018 that go between Lisbon and Barcelona. They share some but not all ports. You might mention which one you are looking at.

We were on Spanish Serenade at the end of April (and the 2018 itinerary looks the same). The weather was cool most of the time. In the summer it can be quite hot.

Portimao - Windstar provided a free shuttle that made a loop from the ship to town and the beach. We didn't do an excursion - I had a wander through the town including a sardine lunch. There are boat tours you can take from town to the grottos, which I might have done but the sea was kind of rough that day so decided not to. In summer, it would be a nice beach day - too cool for that when we were there. I spoke with a couple who took the wine tasting excursion and they enjoyed it.

Seville - we docked near the worlds fair site - easy walk to the Alcazar. DH wanted to take the Windstar tour that included a walk through the Jewish quarter, the Alcazar and other sites. (My plan was to do it on our own, but we had OBC to use so we took the tour.) The guides were good and I appreciated they had two guides so we went walked in two small groups rather than a big crowd.

Gibraltar - we took the advice on the Ports of Call > other Mediterranean Ports board to do a taxi/van tour from the port. It was very enjoyable. We appreciated being in a van with a small group instead of on a bus. We had stops to explore St. Michael's Cave, a view point, the monkey's at the top of the rock and to explore the siege tunnels.

Malaga - We took the Windstar tour to the Picasso museum (still had OBC to use). I felt the tour description was a bit unclear as I read it as saying that we would also visit the Alcazaba, but it was just a stop at a view point to see it.

Almeria - We wanted to take a tour to Granada. We tried to book with Spain Day tours which runs small groups and has excellent reviews but they said the tour was unavailable that day. We booked with Pepe tours instead. This is where there would have been an advantage to booking the ship's tour even though it was more expensive. Because of high winds that would have made it unsafe to get in and out of the harbor at Almeria, we ended up skipping that port and staying overnight for a second day in Malaga instead. Granada is about the same distance from both ports and for those on the ship's excursion, it was announced that the Granada excursion would just leave from Malaga and go ahead as normal. Those of us on the Pepe Tours excursion (there were 8 who had booked it) called Pepe's tours to see what could be done for us. It took them a couple hours to figure it out. Once they had, they told us they could send a minibus, driver and guide to get us to and from Granada but we needed to pay the extra cost of that which was 40 euros each. Scurry around the ship to get in touch with the other parties to see if all would buy into that. The next morning, there was heavy traffic so the minibus was about 30 minutes late. In the end, it did arrive and we had a good tour. (And it was still cheaper than Windstar's tour - but Windstar's tour included a lunch) The Alhambra is amazing. The minibus ride for 8 of us was probably nicer than riding a bus from Almeria and the guide was good.

Palma de Mallorca - Windstar had an included event there. I stayed on the ship as I'd gotten a cold. My plan had been to do a bit of site seeing around town on our own and then go to the event.

We are on the Spanish Serenade, so it's the same itinerary. For Almeria, I'm planning on taking the ship tour to Granada, which is what I normally do when the point of interest is an important one for me and not close to the port. That way, there's no issue about missing the boat or last minute changes, so I'll put up with a larger group or more expense simply for the peace of mind! I checked, and no one has started a roll call for my cruise yet. I suspect roll call activity on Windstar is low because of the low number of passengers, but you never know, maybe we'll have an active group and can put together some small tour groups!