June 6 – SEA DAY,was supposed to be St-Malo, France

that's a big boy!

breakfast

Weather – 12º, real feel 4º! Wind gusts up to 72Km! It rained at some point.

Steps – 3,859

Humidity – who knows%

I usually love a sea day and today was pleasant, but I never thought I’d say Regent was lively! The trouble with a sea day like today is the weather – even if we did have a balcony, we wouldn’t have used it today. We read, and blogged, and napped, which is exactly what we’d do on a sea day in good weather, but it just doesn’t feel the same doing it inside.

spying!

We’ve experienced sea days like this in the past, so we knew

Edi is taking good care of us!

it’d be dull, but we’ve never had a poor-weather sea day on Windstar. They organized a few activities throughout the day, but beyond trivia and a line dance class…there was little to do.

I learned to use Google Reverse Image Search to figure out what yacht we were bobbing around with…it is the Savannah, an 83m superyacht.

Dinner was what the ship calls “Windstar’s Signature Galley Market: Step into the heart of the kitchen for a vibrant, market-style dining adventure with live music” Dinner was buffet style set up in the ship’s galley (interesting!) I think had

welcoming chef

the weather been good it would have been a deck BBQ, but the weather was…not.

We tried to guess when the best time to go would be, we tend to eat late, but even then, things can be busy. It was a kind of a zoo. We don’t tend to eat

galley set up

with others – we’ll chat at the bar or on a tour of course, but dinner is a bit of a commitment, plus the fact that we eat late and we eat by ourselves – not tonight. We sat with 2 couples who as soon as we sat down warned us that actually getting food would be a challenge.

Not ideal, but we had a glass of wine and felt like we had only just eaten lunch! We chatted for a while and then hit the buffet. By this time, things were completely civilized.

olives, olives, olives!

The galley was set up as serving stations – some serve yourself, some the staff served. It was super interesting to have access to a ship area we normally wouldn’t. In the end it was fine – had I come much earlier and didn’t know about the alternative format to dinner I’d have been a bit peeved, but we were completely fine about it.

Chris filling his plate

We knew dinner would be a different format because we read. Windstar doesn’t distribute paper copies of each day’s itinerary like Regent does. In fact, Regent is a late adopter to technology – no app, no onboard website where all of the info can be found like

Guernsey sun set

Windstar has. Everything you want to know about the day’s events, excursions, your account, food/menus throughout the day etc. is on a website only accessible onboard. This is where we learned dinner would be different – people we talked to were surprised they arrived for dinner. This is all on your TV if you don’t want to use your phone. We won’t even talk about Princess – we were spoiled by the tech they use.

Guide to British English

We came back to the room after dinner to find chocolates and this funny guide to “British English” – there were phrase guides for Portugal, France and Spain…this was funny.

Christina - I love the tea towels too!

June 5 – AT SEA

delicious cheese

Weather – 16º

Steps – 2,883; this has to be a record low!

Humidity – little%

Motion of the ocean says it all about last night and today. Again, there was a lot of rocking and rolling, but I felt fine…that is until I got up and moved around. By the time I’d had a shower (where I had to hold on, especially anytime I closed my eyes) and was ready to leave the room, I was feeling a bit queasy. Not too bad, but something wasn’t quite right – I got a bit to eat and sat for a while and felt better, but still a bit off.

We read for most of the morning, ate lunch, and went back to bed. It wasn’t warm enough to sit outside and there was little for ship activity (not that we partake much anyway) so I figured horizontal was the position I needed to take. After a nap I felt better, but still not 100%.

The star of tonight’s dinner was French fromage. Apparently, the chef went on a cheese run yesterday in La Rochelle. All 3 cheese were delicious!

turn down treat - post-its

The star of tonight definitely wasn’t the ship’s Asian restaurant. Although we had a reservation, they had no room for us because earlier reservations came late and others stayed too long. We were asked to wait in the lounge, but eventually
we bailed and went to the main dining room. When I went to tell them we were bailing, they were mortified and extremely apologetic, but come on…you can take the reservation, but you can’t hold the reservation!

Earlier we learned that getting into tomorrow’s port of St. Malo, France would be unlikely due to the weather and the fact that we would be tendering – rough seas and tender boats don’t mix.

turn down treat - eye glass cloths

Tonight, during dinner that was confirmed - we will be going straight to Guernsey, UK. However…Guernsey is also a tender port, and the weather isn’t expected to improve for at least a day. We’ll bob around in the English Channel gazing at Guernsey dreaming of all the pints in pubs we’ll be missing.

The cruise director (or entertainment manager as Windstar calls them) put on his own after-dinner 30-minute show of a handful of songs that would fit right in on Regent.

By the end of the day, the seas had calmed a bit and so had my belly. I was glad to get back to horizontal and call it a day.

No photos today, so I thought I'd add some of the turndown treat that have been left for us.

June 4 – La Rochelle, France

Weather – 18º, WINDY! a few sprinkles

cool door in courtyard

Steps – 9,442

Humidity – 30%

Rocking and rolling doesn’t quite describe how last night’s motion of the ocean was. The captain warned us that there would be motion, but WOW! We were soooooo confident what ever the night brought us, we’d have experienced worse…I’m not so sure.

I’m not sure if it is the small size of the boat (this is 12,000 tonnes VS Regent’s

town buildings

48,000) or the mechanics of it – over the years we have learned the importance of stabilizers. Apparently, this boat has them, but it doesn’t exactly feel like it. I suppose I don’t know what it would feel like without, I don’t want to find out.

Thankfully, we didn’t feel any seasickness. That

marina with town gates in distance

isn’t surprising, as we’ve never felt it before, but we always wonder if we just haven’t been in rocky enough seas.

The old adage “one hand for the ship” definitely applied last night when venturing to the loo – not much of a venture, kind of what I think the distance in an RV might be…this room is tight.

beautiful door

Speaking of room size, this one and the Regent room is about the same square footage – this 280 and Regent 300. This space here doesn’t seem to be used as well – about half of the space here is

the beautiful port & the STEEP gangway

used for a ‘sitting area’ and the rest for the bed, closet and bathroom. We trip over each other much more here.

We docked by 8AM and didn’t need to be off the ship until after noon, so showering wasn’t impacted by any rocking and rolling.

Before this cruise is done, we will be spending a day in Guernsey, UK – therefore we need a UK entry visa. Everyone not a UK citizen was reminded of this in a

Cafe de la Paix for Pineau

letter this morning which also told us we needed to prove it to the ship. We got the visa (2 year, £20) last year when we were in the UK, but Chris had to get a new one this morning because he has a new passport. – it was an easy online procedure. That was the extent of the morning’s activity.

We grabbed small breakfasts from the ship’s Coffee Corner of cappuccinos and pastries and sat in the lounge all by ourselves to read - many people are off on morning tours.

Bunker Museum

Our afternoon tour of La Rochelle (pop. 80,000) started with a 20-minute drive from the port to the old town. La Rochelle’s port lacked 100% of Bordeaux’s picturesque charm – you win some, you lose some.

This part of tours is always interesting, because it gives the guide a chance to talk about the town and area in general.

Once in the old town, Christine our guide, supplied all of us with listening systems – a device each of us wears around our necks with an attached earpiece. Surprisingly, tours rarely use these, but they are brilliant – no need to be close to the guide to hear.

Chris and Christine our guide

We followed Christine as she described what we were seeing

one of a few half-timber houses

We also visited the WWII Bunker Museum for a self-guided tour. This was very interesting - in an actual underground bunker built by the Germans in 1941 when they occupied La Rochelle. It was a good reminder that France was not just at war during WWII but occupied. There were about 20 of us down there, I’m not sure if the intent of the museum was to give a feeling of claustrophobia, but that was felt. There were displays of what the Germans used the bunker for, but also what life was like in La Rochelle during the war.

Under German occupation, bunkers were also built in the port area (La Pallice) for submarines. It was used for the movie Das Boot.

Hotel du Ville (City Hall)

After the bunker the walking tour continued until the last half an hour of the tour when we found a charming place (Café de la Paix - a beautiful 19^th century building with ornate decoration) for a Pineau - a local apéritif. Pineau is a fortified wine, made from unfermented or lightly fermented grape juice fortified with Cognac. It was lovely (€4.5) – sweet and cold.

so close I couldn't get it all

We missed the Captain’s welcome on the first half of the cruise, so went to it tonight. We usually aren’t big on these events but wanted to know who these folks were when we’ve seen them around the ship.

Lori - you got that right!!! One of the songs was Summer of '69, we were the only Canadians, of course Bryan Adams is international, but many didn't know him - she didn't.

the ship's excursion team 

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.