June 3 – Bordeaux, France

St Andre Basilica

Weather – 22º, sprinkling of rain on and off

St Andre interior

Steps – 11,923

Humidity – 30%

I can’t say enough about how fantastic our docking position is in Bordeaux. From our room we can see the city and after a 5-minute walk, we are in the heart of the old town.

Today, is the first time, when organized cruise excursions are offered that I think we have ever found our own tour. We have occasionally not done a ship tour and wandered on our own, but this is probably the first time we’ve found our own.

St Andre bell tower

Being that we are usually on Regent where the excursions are included in the cruise fare, we would join one of those, but since Windstar doesn’t include excursions and because we’ve been here before, we found a ‘free walking tour’.

city gate

We’ve done many, many free walking tours when we are in a city on our own. Basically, it’s a regular walking tour that you pay for in the end. Most are pay what you want, with a few people not paying at all, but this one is a bit more upfront about the expectation of payment at the end, and suggest the average is 12-15 Euros per person – fine by us. These tours almost always have a big crowd, so we are wandering the tight streets with a group of 30, but Emma the guide, managed to stop in larger areas when she talked to us.

After the tour we found Totto for lunch. This place has awnings and chairs spilling

Place de la Bourse & Miroir d'eau

into a small square. We had pizza, croquettes, and wine – very good. Oh, and there was smoking – I know I have to accept that part of the European culture is outdoor (and maybe indoor, we just haven’t sat anywhere inside) smoking, but I don’t think I’ll every get used to it.

Then came the highlight of the day…tea towels! We finally found them – I bought 9, for about 5CAD each. The ones we

Place des Quinconces

bought about 10 years ago, we use every single day and are getting a bit threadbare, so I’m thrilled to have new ones – we’ll have to come back again in 10 years for the next set.

Just like last time (but this time we were at a

linens shop in background

different linens store location) Chris found a spot across the street to wait with a refreshment – a Sangria Blanche. He had one waiting for me when my shopping was done.

Back at the boat, I pulled up to our Juliett balcony to blog and Chris headed to the hot tub where he met a couple from Calgary.

should last me a while

Eventually, I tried to take a nap, but because it was embarkation day for many people, there was a long

you can really see him this time

security announcement which was hard to ignore.

au revoir Bordeaux

June 2 – Bordeaux, France

Weather – 21º, started with a downpour,

90K upstream

luckily, we were still on the ship eating breakfast inside the cozy ship

Steps – 12,720

Humidity – low%

Bordeaux (pop.1.4 million) is a repeat port for us. It is on the Goronne River, about 90K upstream from the Atlantic Ocean. We entered the estuary at around 4AM and were docked in Bordeaux by 10. The sail in was very different and interesting compared to sailing on the open ocean – more like being on a river cruise, with land on either side of us and passing other ships (some passenger, some cargo) close to us.

The river looks dirty, but it isn’t. It looks brown because the salty water from the Atlantic is mixing with the fresh water from the river. The salty water is heavier than fresh so sinks to the bottom and stirs up sediment to make it dirty

going under the bridge

There is a vertical lift bridge over the Garonne River that we had to pass under. This 110m long bridge was raised to its height of 55m for us to

bridge going down

pass. I don’t think I’ve ever seen another vertical lift bridge – very cool. We passed under this at about 830, we considered going onto the bow of the ship to watch the coming in, but we had a perfectly fine view from our room where we watched the events from our Juliet balcony.

Speaking of our balcony…this ship has no true balconies. Actually, I think there are 2 super fancy-schmancy rooms that have true balconies, but for the most

good morning Bordeaux

part, rooms either have port holes, large windows, or Juliet balconies. When we booked this, knowing nothing about Windstar, we flip-flopped between a

Place de la boursse

balcony or no balcony…we made the right choice, despite the higher price. Even though we can’t fit a chair to sit on out there, we can stand and can move chairs close enough to sit and enjoy the outside world. This has made us realize how much we value a balcony and will continue to be hard pressed to go without a balcony.

Today we have NO PLANS. There is a loose plan of wine, walking, and tea towel (or torchon or serviette a café) shopping. We accomplished 2 of 3. For some

church, wine, and olives

reason we were unable to find anywhere to buy the tea towels I bought the last time we were here. I’ll do some more research back at the ship and as we are still here tomorrow…maybe??

We wandered and said to each other numerous times…remember that?

random, cool thing

We eventually found a square that looked perfect for a Bordeaux rosé wine and olives while booking a walking tour on our phones for tomorrow. As it turned out, the walking tour meeting place was exactly where we were drinking wine!

Of course, after we left our wine drinking table under cover the rain came…hard, for about 5 minutes. Luckily, we found a doorway to wait out the rain.

Then we looked and looked for the Bordeaux linens store …nope…shouldn’t be that hard, last time we just stumbled upon somewhere to buy when I wasn’t even looking…maybe that’s why.

One the way back we found a Carrefour in search of compté chips. Having been all around the world, looking for weird and wild chip flavours, compté are my all-

not too bad

time favourites. We can now find these in Calgary, so finding them abroad isn’t such as discovery, but they are delicious. Today the closest we could find were “Raclette”…fine, but not nearly as good.

Back at the ship, we grabbed a drink to accompany the Raclette – the drink of the day was a Champagne cocktail. This is well done. Windstar doesn’t seem to make any drinks overly sweet…this one was perfect. Regent will use sweet&sour mix for margaritas and French 75s or basically

our set up

anything that calls for citrus juice. In my opinion, that is super cheap – I’m perfectly happy with bottled juice rather than fresh squeezed at home, but at a bar on a cruise ship, or in a hotel, or a restaurant, or an actual bar and I’m being charged through the nose…it should be fresh. Anyway…Windstar uses nothing but fresh. In fact, we ran into Eugene one of the bartenders in town today, buying a new juicer, because their last one died.

French show

We enjoyed the chips, and the cocktail with our chairs pulled up to the Juliet balcony. As soon as we opened the curtains, we realized it was low tide…this morning it was high tide and the land outside our room was about 10 feet down, now it is about eye level.

Tonight’s trivia was 80s Name That Tune, so…I had to forego the nap to try to win! And win we did!! Most of the songs were pretty easy, but some were tough and Sin, the entertainment manager only played a snippet of each. The one that we couldn’t quite get was 99 Red Balloons – Chris finally got that one.

outside our room at night

We won! 41 out of a total 43 points. We clearly missed Material Girl, when we wrote Like a Virgin, but we missed the ‘baby’ off the end of Don’t You Want Me Baby” – felt like we should get part marks for that one, but it didn’t matter, no one was close to 41. We won some very spiffy Windstar luggage tags!

We met up with a couple from Australia, who we met at trivia for dinner. Kim was

winner, winner

convinced she would be the winner against all of the oldies who usually turned up for trivia…then we walked in and…sorry Kim. She and her husband were fun to have dinner with.

tying up, right outside our room

Tonight’s show was “French Can-Can” and it was BRUTAL!  I don’t even know what it had to do with France. There was some French music, but they also sang Michael Bublé and New York, New York and they weren’t great. I appreciate the effort, but I blame the cruise…not the performers who did their best, but their best wasn’t great.

June 1 – AT SEA

oh yeah, and we had Spritzes!

Weather – 21º

Steps – 6,951

Humidity – low%

Sea days, like most sea days look very much like all others. With nothing to do and no particular schedule, we take it very easy.

sunset

We normally don’t order room service breakfast unless we have a morning excursion and I want yogurt and fruit - I haven’t tried finding ground flax, but I’m not hopeful. However, today we decided to get room service breakfast – I still only got fruit and yogurt…Chris got a couple of eggs and bacon.

Next, it was time to book our excursions for the second and last leg of this 15-

day, 2 leg-cruise. We’ve been to more of the places on the next leg of this cruise than the last, so we aren’t scheduling things in everyplace. Repeating a walking tour of a small town for $100 doesn’t seem like a good use of $$. We’ll go into to town for sure on our own, or find a free walking tour, or find a pub and the Marks & Spencer in the only UK port on this vacation.

Elvis tribute

We then spent some time at the pool – this pool doesn’t seem to have any chair hogging folks, like we’ve had on most other cruises and especially on Regent. The way Windstar handles pool chairs (which may be because of how small this boat is) it that when you want a chair, they set one up for you. All of the chairs are stacked until you want one. This seems to limit the plopping of random magazines and leaving for hours ‘occupying’ a prime chair in the shade for god

knows how long.

The drink of the day was a Bloody Mary – I’m not the hugest fan of thick drinks…I much prefer thin flavourful clamato to thick bland tomato, but this one was spicy at least.

the always popular 'Splish Splash"

Lunch was ‘NYC Street’ – can’t say I’ve ever had that theme before…interesting – hot dogs, chili, fried fish, mac&cheese, but no pretzels – I was salivating over the prospect of a pretzel. I’m not sure how New York street that all was. I had a piece of fish and some chili and stuck to the usual lunch buffet items. One new item, was a clam salad…interesting but needed the addition of some jalapeno, which helped.

Then it was back to the pool for a post-lunch chill session – as if the rest of the day hasn’t been chill.

At 3:00 they set up an ice cream bar at the pool served by the ship’s officers…cookies&cream topped with Kahlua and a sprinkle of crispy chocolate balls, all that was missing was a bit of crunchy salt.

Groove Factor

However, little I like hot tubs, our room’s proximity to the secret one is hard to pass up, so I joined Chris for a bit of a soak. I tried to get my shoulder positioned on a jet, but all I seemed to do was get a shot to the face.

Dinner was at the ship’s Asian place called Basil and Bamboo. We looked at the menu before we went and didn’t have high hopes, but things were great. The

best thing was a burrata salad, which I’m not sure is Asian – I suppose it’s the basil. I wasn’t complaining as it was delicious. I am a sucker for burrata. This was washed down with sake – I’m not a huge fan, but given the opportunity, I partake.

sweet dreams!

After dinner we were able to catch the end of the crew show. As usual, I love the crew show. One solo did Shallow and, while she was no Gaga, she was pretty darn great! That’s a risk, going onstage to give that one a go – bravo!

Lastly, was a good time not a long time at the bar – I had a Heineken Zero, I’m growing to really enjoy those. Of course I’d rather be pouring back the

Champagne, but I’m responsible you know. We listened to the duo (Wake Up Duo) and then the 4-piece band (Groove Factor). Groove Factor was particularly great! We knew and liked almost every song they played! Their front woman plays and sings! Often the woman is only a vocalist, but her guitar skills were fantastic – I didn’t get a pic of her with her guitar, next time.

We returned to the room “good night cookies” - lovely.

A note about the bed…this one is TINY. As with most cruise ship beds they are 2 twins pushed together, so that when people occupying the room want twins, that can be set up easily, this isn’t a problem this time and is hasn’t been in the past, but the bed is smaller than any cruise ship bed I can remember. River boats would be different, but as for ocean going chips…this bed it tiny.  The twins would be tiny!

May 31 – Bilbao, Spain

tortilla and pintxos #1

Weather – 24º sunny

Steps – 6,887

Humidity – 23%

Today’s weather was much better than yesterday – today is sunny, slight breeze, and warm – perfect for touring.

It is day 2 in Bilbao. Overnights in port are pretty rare. These days it seems like cruise lines are including more overnights in port and are making it known through their advertising. At least that is the case with Regent. Being new to Windstar, I’m not sure if overnights are usual, or new for them also.

Either way, passengers like them. One reason passengers like them is for the opportunity to do things in port at night. Typically, departure is in the evening or even late afternoon, so tours and time off of the boat are limited to daylight

lively, Casco Veijo 

hours. Us going in to find a pub in the evening is an almost unheard of opportunity on ocean cruises. River cruises…now that is another story, but for ocean cruises we are almost always onboard by dinner time.

Being that we were in port over night we had hopped there would be an organized evening tour…nope. I suppose it was good we didn’t have to choose between a football match with locals in their square and an organized tour.

second stop for food and drink

This morning we headed back to Bilbao for another walking tour of the old town, or Casco Veijo and some ‘pintxos’ (Basque tapas.) The drive in was exactly like yesterday, but the walking tour wasn’t. Some was the same, but we saw different things too. Duncan, our English guide, shared some of the same info as we heard yesterday. I always wonder how much guides make up.

After the walking bit, we stopped for our first pintxos – a piece of bread drizzled with olive oil, topped

Chris in the hot tub on the bow cam

with some hot picked peppers, an anchovy, and 2 olives – very tasty! We also had a rather large piece of tortilla. Technically, the tortilla wasn’t a pintxos – pintxos technically are traditionally something pierced with a toothpick.

This was accompanied by a drink – we both had a Txakoli, a local white wine.

Next, we wandered just a bit through the old streets to the next pintxos bar for a what resembled tuna salad on a very small baguette and a pintxos of a piece of bread topped with a large mushroom and some kind of white sauce. The drink we had with this was called a martini but wasn’t what we’d know as a martini. What I think it was, was Martini Rosso, served on ice with an orange slice and an olive – tasty.

We chatted with many of the folks on the tour with us – it is the drinking/eating tours that force you to chat with folks on the tour with you. Most people on today’s tour were American, but one couple were from Victoria.

our room attendant Edi from Sumatra

The only downside with being a group of 20 was that we didn’t fit into the small front spaces of these bars…sort of like last night, the inside is small, people just get drinks and spill onto the outside and sit on tables in the square or on the steps or just stand. Our group of 20 we sat in back rooms in both places – nice, but not very charming or atmospheric.

Once back at the ship, we weren’t interested in lunch. Chris went to the hot-tub, (if you look really cloes you can see him in the bow cam!) and I spent time icing and blogging.

Dinner tonight was a whole ship deck BBQ. I’m never a fan of these sorts of events…too many people jostling at the buffet eating food at communal tables. Chris tried to assure me by reminding me of how few people are on this boat –

turndown treat

312 max, not sure how many in reality. I have to agree that things have not been crowded. Compared with Regent (or Princess, which was our last cruise) things on this cruise have been good in the crowd dept.

As it turned out, it was busy, but very well laid out and managed. The pool area is 2 floors with the pool and surrounding chairs on one floor and the bar and other chairs on the floor above. The lounge chairs were swapped out for tables to eat at and food stations were spread out over the 2 floors, there was nothing made to order so this sped things up. There was also a walk-up wine station – this way if all you wanted was a glass of wine, you didn’t need to hunt for a waiter. There was also a roving white and red sangria station…another way to avoid hunting waiters.

Waiters for drink service are not actually hard to come by. In fact, when Chris was at our secret hot tub earlier today, a waiter passed by there to take his drink order. The hot tub is on floor 5, the bar is on level 8…that’s pretty good service!

Anyway…there were many options for food, we had a good meal (including a piece of chocolate cheese – not sure about that one…interesting, but not my favourite.)

Then it was time for the staff line dance. We did not join in.

After the deck party, everything was moved to the indoor bar. At first, it wasn’t too busy but then picked up. I have to say the musical selections have been terrific! I've still to hear Lady in Red!

Every night during turn-down we are left small treats…sometimes something sweet, sometimes a small memento. Tonight’s treat was a coin from the Guggenheim, with the Puppy on it…charming.

May 30 – Bilbao, Spain

Guggenheim exterior

Basque Flag

Weather – 21º

Steps – 15,776

Humidity – 20%

Bilbao (pop. 950,000) is the largest city in Northern Spain. This is a first visit for both Chris and me. Gijon and Vigo were also first-time visits for each of us.

impressive buildings

The main attraction of Bilbao for us (especially me) is The Guggenheim Museum. This is a museum of modern and contemporary art in the old town of Bilbao and
has been open since 1997. The building itself might be the most interesting of all there is to see in and around the museum and there were plenty of interesting things to see. The building was designed by Frank Gehry, a Canadian architect.

these were all over one building

When we were inside, we were led to some main exhibits by a museum guide. First, we saw and walked through “The Matter of Time” massive steel pieces intended to make the viewer a bit dizzy…it did.

The museum’s collection isn’t huge, but we only had about an hour with the
guide, and another 30 minutes on our own – that was almost enough time, but we could have used about an hour more.

train station

Not only is there art outside the museum, but there is also art outside…a huge flower covered dog, a giant bronze,
marble, and steel spider and a tree made of huge, mirrored balls.

Guggenheim interior

Before we got to the Guggenheim, we had a panoramic tour from Gitxo (pop.75,000) the town where we are actually docked at – described by the interwebs as “a mostly affluent residential area”. Very near to the water of Gitxo are large houses that our guide, Marina, called palaces.

Once in Bilbao, we follow Marina as she leads us through the narrow, old streets of Bilbao. Bilbao’s

giant flower puppy

old buildings are large, ornate,
and beautiful. The old part of town is busy despite the early time of day. I’d guess the people out are mostly like us – tourists, both from their appearance and their behavior, no one seems to be headed to work or school.

"The Matter of Time"

We’ve been on many an early morning walking tour that are always slightly disappointing, because shops,
restaurants, and bars aren’t open. Even when not in Spain…unless a place is for breakfast or coffee, 11 is too early. No matter…as usual, we can do plenty of looking. I’m not sure how tomorrow’s tapas tour will turn out when we will be back at the same time to eat.

Back at the ship we were between times for food, lunch was over and food at the bar wasn’t quite on yet. We found the cocktail of the day – a Hugo Spritz, and waited until the time when we could place our orders of chicken sliders and a burger.

"The Matter of Time"

Chris wanted to see if we could find a place to watch a soccer match in the evening. We walked into Gitxo and found a small square with a few bars. A couple of these had TVs outside – most places have little inside seating area. There are many tables and chairs outside, and you go into order drinks or food.

tapistry room

This is a very locals areas. We could easily have been the only tourists there. I didn’t hear any English. The table nearest to us had 3 men and little kids, the kids were stationed in the middle of the square with food. The kids wandered
back and forth between their station and their dads. Eventually one of the dads bought them bags of candy. By the second half of the game, the moms had arrived. There were other kids around. The whole square culture was interesting…bars, drinks,
kids, dogs, the game, food. Everyone looked like us. No kids were on phones – there were phones around, but the kids were too busy eating candy, petting dogs and tearing around.

great sliver balls

Guggenheim exterior

After the half hour walk back to the ship, partly along the residential streets of Gitxo and partly along the water it was about 9:00, so we ordered room service dinner.

We had to warm up too. Although the temp was 18º, we were chilly. All in all the weather was pretty gloomy today

May 29 – Gijon, Spain

church at Labour University

Weather – 21º

more of the Labour University

Steps – 10,104

Humidity – 20%

Today was the fist day we needed more than a t-shirt. It wasn’t cold, but it wasn’t warm either, especially when the wind picked up. Chris still

wore shorts but eventually put on a jacket.

Today was all about CIDER! One of my all-time favourite beverages.

We weren’t in port until 2pm, so we had a lazy morning, followed by a Spanish themed lunch, a drink while listening to ‘Cool by the Pool’ and watching sail in.

young apple orchard

The tour was a bit of a dud in retrospect, but it was fine and I got to sample some Spanish cider or sidre, as they spell it.

Again, we were on a large coach with only 24. And again, we had seats at the back to ourselves.

Gijon (pop. 270,000) is small city in the province of Asturias famous for cider.

old and new school crushing

Our first stop was at the former Labour University of Gijón, built from 1946-55. We really aren’t told a lot about this place other than its architecture is impressive.

Yes, I’ll agree that the buildings are impressive, but what else?? No stories, no lore…that’s what you usually hear when shown buildings. We were wondering what the point of this visit was.

With a name of ‘Labour’ we thought it had something to do with Communism or Fascism. It does, but we learn that from Google. Maria, our guide, only tells us that it was built as a school for children to encourage sports, learning, and excellence. Hmmm, there seemed to be more to

they put me to work!

the story and of course there was. It was first built as an orphanage for kids whose parents died in mines, then it was used by Franco during his reign. This place certainly is beautiful and impressive, but it was strikingly obvious how much of its history was avoided.

giant barrels

Next, we were off to the "llagar" (cider mill) where we hear about how Spanish cider is made – if we were here in the fall, during harvest, we’d actually

see what happens - now there isn’t much going on other than tours. After our lesson, we are rewarded with tasting 2 ciders and various regional cheeses.

These ciders are poured from a great distance (whether from a bottle or tap) and apparently this is where the fizz comes from. You aren’t supposed to savour, or smell, or look at the cider once it is in your glass, you are simply to drink so as to not let the bubbles dissipate.

our own bottle

I’d have liked to have tasted without the whole long-distance pouring, to see if there was a difference. We had our own bottle later in the day and we didn’t do any sort of long-distance pouring, and the fizz seemed the same. I really liked both ciders we tried – very dry.

tree made of sidre bottles

The last stop on today’s tour was to the old town of Gijon. We wandered behind Maria who gave bits of info, and then we were released for an hour of free time. This was about 5:30 and there wasn’t much going on. We saw evidence that things would be going on later, but this being Spain…not much now. We wandered a bit and finally found a place to get a bottle of cider – 700mL, 5.9%, 4 Euros.

street drawing

All in all, the tour was a bit of a miss. It was fine, but it was just a bit meh. We kept wondering if we were missing something…maybe it was Maria, maybe it is just a basic place.