Nillah

We enjoyed the cruise overall but the onboard quality had dropped off with the crew change, we were on the same ship just six weeks prior where we had probably our best Windstar cruise ever in terms of food and service. However, entertainment is something that has been quite poor on all but one of our 7 Windstar cruises. I'm sure you will have a great time in January, happy cruising!

I have written a fairly detailed trip report about our cruise earlier this year from Athens to Istanbul on Star Legend, it is a bit delayed but it took me a long time to sift through and sort out the trip images. I've added a lot of images to my report and all the onboard menus from Amphora restaurant, which is why I didn't post it here. https://theboutiquecruiser.com/cruise-report-star-legend-aegean-sea-odyssey/ A warning to those who wish to go through the Corinth canal, it isn't always guaranteed as the canal has been closed regularly on/off for a few years due to maintenance and unexpected landslides. We missed out being able to go through the canal by one cruise due to the maintenance window being extended, but Windstar shouldn't have scheduled a canal transit so close to the maintenance period. They also knew about the closure when we booked the cruise just a few weeks before the sail date, but didn't mention the closure until around a week before. The canal authority publish scheduled maintenance closures on their website so that might be worth checking out. https://corinthcanal.com/news-announcements/?lang=en If you want to increase your chances of transiting the canal, book a cruise that is in the not at the beginning of the cruise season, so aim for June, July, August. If anyone has questions about the itinerary or ship I will do my best to answer. Happy cruising everyone!

That's not 100%, Windstar like to lie about this. Seabourn have a similar arrangement where they also have dinner/music at Harbour Road in Ephesus. Yes Windstar are allowed to use Celcus library when the passenger count is under something like 220, but if the Surf or Star Class yachts are over 200 pax they use the Harbour Road just like Seabourn.

We had the dinner and honestly going for music would have been enough. The food was terrible, really terrible and whilst the setting and atmosphere was incredible the food was so bad. It is provided by a nearby local hotel and just very low quality.

Thanks! That was a very useful comparison.

@summerclouds @jpalbny Thank you both for your detailed and helpful replies.

We are looking at doing a Micronesia cruise with Ponant in either 2025 or 2026. The itineraries are quite similar, both ending in Guam so we are happy to have either itinerary. However the ships are of different classes, one is on the Le Jacques-Cartier and the other is on Le Soléal, which is a little older. Does anyone have experience of both classes, if so which did you prefer and why? Secondly this would be our first Ponant cruise and we only speak basic French, not enough to listen to a lecture or have meaningful conversations with pure French speakers. So how have English speakers found Ponant? How have you coped with expedition activities, lectures and onboard information? Any other comments/observations about Ponant would be helpful. We have cruised with Scenic Eclipse, Windstar and Azamara previously.

We did this back in April. Right now the Turkish Lira is very weak so we were able to get a private mini van with guide and driver that took us to Ephesus and back for just $30 USD each. Kusadasi has a large cruise terminal and there are a lot of taxis waiting outside. We had a very bad experience with a Turkish taxi in Istanbul so would recommend organising something through Viator in advance. I recently posted a blog post about our Windstar Ephesus trip, this might be useful to you. Happy cruising! https://theboutiquecruiser.com/cruise-report-star-legend-aegean-sea-odyssey/#kusadasi-including-ephesus-turkey

The beverage packages and prices have since changed. https://theboutiquecruiser.com/windstar-cruises-beverage-guide/

@kej1 Thanks for all of your posts and responding to the various questions. it has been extremely interesting reading about your journey and how Seabourn is handling tropical expedition cruising. They've just published more of their 2025 South Pacific voyages and they don't look like they are heading to Guam and Micronesia next year. Is there any chance you would be able to share some pics either on here or one of the Facebook Seabourn groups?

I’m contemplating a Seabourn expedition cruise so your postings have been of great interest and are highly appreciated. Do you know what the backgrounds of the expedition are? I did a Scenic Eclipse Antarctica expedition cruise and that had marine biologists, glaciologist and geologist in the expedition team. Have their been any marine/oceanography themes lectures? Also do you have any information on how the scuba diving is going for the people that signed up for that? How frequently is it available?

Here is a new link that included all of the World Spa Windstar spa and beauty treatments along with updated prices for 2024: https://theboutiquecruiser.com/windstar-spa-guide/