Shuttles to nearby city from port on Windstar.

[jtslattery]

is there a listing somewhere, or a way to find out, which ports Windstar provides a shuttle to nearby city. Example - Port of Gexto to nearby city of Bilbao.

First timer with Windstar so I don't know what they normally provide.

[CruiseOrLand]

Because it's a relatively small company, with small ships, both company-sponsored and web-user-experience reporting is limited. It may also change too much from year to year. (For example, last month we used two different cruise ports in Reykjavik, one right downtown, and one on the outskirts.)

 

On a Japan cruise, we were told several times that "The shuttle is provided by the port authorities." That was mainly in the context of the possibility that no extra bus would be provided if the scheduled bus filled up. I suppose it's a special case, but when our cruise excursion was over an hour late returning, in Central America once, they had moved the ship some distance, to free up a berth promised to another ship. Of course the tour contractor brought the bus to the new location.

 

It's also important to specify that some cities are some distance from the associated port, like Seoul, Korea, or Beijing, China. I was astonished that people on our cruise took an excursion from Busan to Seoul, which involved many hours on a high-speed train.

 

Sorry if this is not news to you, just trying to provide some response on a rather quiet newsboard! We tend to use Windstar for island destinations and similar, where the shuttle may not be so important. It was easy enough to walk into town from the Corsica port, which looked more like a marina. But because it was late October, or a weekend, even the TI lady was unable to find any taxi driver willing to take a half- or full-day hire away from his family! Maybe you're asking about Athens and Istanbul, for example. I can say that the Hong Kong pier was right downtown, if requiring an exit through a luxury shopping mall!

[new_cruiser]

On 7/17/2023 at 4:54 AM, jtslattery said:

is there a listing somewhere, or a way to find out, which ports Windstar provides a shuttle to nearby city. Example - Port of Gexto to nearby city of Bilbao.

First timer with Windstar so I don't know what they normally provide.

 

For the specific example, they provided a free shuttle when we stopped there. In European ports where we weren't right downtown, they have usually had a shuttle. 

[Strenz]

We had a shuttle in Valencia, Spain. 

[Badger Dad]

The city provided a shuttle bus from the port to Bilbao when our Windstar cruise stopped there in May. It’s an industrial port, so the shuttle bus was a necessity.  We were left off in the city center and caught the bus back at the same location.  No problem.

[mariners]

Sometimes, the area Windstar docks is changed last minute by the port authorities.  Windstar did a fabulous job of letting us know after they had been informed of the change, and also provided additional information as to what that would mean in terms of shuttles, whether we could walk in the port, etc. when we were in Spain.  If one was on a Windstar excursion, that was not a concern as they made all the arrangements for the change.  For those passengers who planned on exploring on their own, or meeting a guide/friends/etc., the additional information was a big help.  

 

I pre-printed maps of the ports that we were going to, different docking areas where me might dock, and also saved them on my phone.  It was then easy to plan out routes that we could take to get to where we wanted to go or to just wander at will and enjoy whatever we chose to do spontaneously.

 

 

 

 

[HaveDogWillTravel]

Would anyone have recent information about how to get into town from where Windstar docks in Canakkale, Turkey?  We were just going to go to the area around the Trojan Horse and ferry dock.  

[paulygb]

We called at Canakkale last October on Legend. The ship docked at Kepez and there was was shuttle to downtown near the Trojan horse.

 

[HaveDogWillTravel]

On 8/20/2023 at 12:00 PM, paulygb said:

We called at Canakkale last October on Legend. The ship docked at Kepez and there was was shuttle to downtown near the Trojan horse.

 

Thank you!