Windstar Cruise

I decided to do a post separate for the boat itself and will do others for the stops that we made.  We did a ten day cruise leaving from Civitavecchia, about an hours drive from Rome, going down around Sicily and Malta returning to Civitavecchia. 

The cruise was through Windstar.  The boat has about 300 passengers plus crew.  Being smaller it does not have some of the activities of bigger ships.  But, that was fine.  It was actually nice to not have thousands of other people around.

 

 

 

I was definitely more interested doing site seeing at the ports than playing games on a cruise ship. 

The cabins were nice, but small.  I loved being able to unpack my  bag for 10days and not have to worry about lugging it around with me.  Made travel so much easier. 

 

 

 

 

Everyday when we left a port the boat would let out it's sails and play "1492" from the movie Columbus

Our first day on the boat we had a long haul and were on for 24hrs, but it was fine.  We just enjoyed having some time to relax.  We even took a class on the art of folding towels into animals. 





And won a straight razor shave.  There being no men in our cabin we decided just to gift it another passenger

We typically would eat breakfast and dinner on the ship.  Breakfast we pretty much always opted for the buffet.  Which offered quite a few options, cheeses, meats, eggs, fruit, breads, yogurts, etc, etc and always a cappuccino.  Definitely different for me as I am not a coffee drinker, but when in Italy... and it actually was not bad. 



Dinner they had a menu that varied from day to day.  Some of it very good, some of it ok.  We typically would get a bottle of wine and have it for a couple of nights and sit and enjoy the wine, an appetizer, a meal and dessert. 

 



 

They did have two specialty restaurants on board that you were given a night at each.  Unfortunately, I was feeling a bit sick from the boat on the one of those nights and so didn't enjoy the meal as much as I might have otherwise. 

Most of the other passengers were couples and honestly not always friendly, but we did make friends with another mother/daughter team

Saw some beautiful sights and even spotted a dolphin

I've never been one to think of going on a cruise, but would definitely do something like that again.   Basically was just a moving hotel room.  Super convenient and saw amazing sites