May 26 –Lisbon, Portugal

Star Legend

Weather – 31º

Steps – 5,302, sounds about right for a ship day

Humidity – 40%

The jury is out on the matter of jet lag, all I know is that I sleep fine in the night (over 8 hrs last night), but my eyes still want to close many times throughout the day.

We ended up choosing to take an Uber (€7) to the port…I didn’t need to be a

tight, but functional

sweaty mess when I arrived, and I have a bum shoulder that is still angry since all of the hauling I did on our travel day.

home for the next 15 days

It took about 45 minutes to board. Once on, we booked our shore excursions, unpacked and found the nearest bar – I had a Spritz made with non-alcohol sparkling wine, still a bit of booze from the other ingredients, but super low and I wouldn’t know the difference. Nothing is very far on this boat – there are a maximum of 312 passengers, about 1/3 to half the size of Regent.

We are on the Windstar Legend for the next 15 days. This is 2 shorter cruises packaged together. Because we’ve packaged 2 cruises together, we receive the
‘All-In’ package. This might also be because this cruise wasn’t selling well. The All-In package gives us pre-paid tips, WIFI, booze, and $1000 in shipboard credit. This makes things kinda equal to Regent. The $1000 won’t cover an excursion in every port like Regent, but it’ll cover about 2/3. The overall cost is similar to Regent.

We chatted with the first bartender we found…she is all business – not super friendly, but super efficient. I’d like to get to know a bit

flag raising

about the people we encounter, but I appreciate efficiency. She let us know that basically everything on the bar menu is included in the All-In package. We found a Cognac for $128 that isn’t included – fine with us. Otherwise, all is included.

tasty!

Then it was time for the safety drill which involved checking in with one person, listening to the safety info (barely audible) via the PA system, and watching the safety video in the room. That’s it. Not sure how safe this is, but I’ll take it.

Windstar has a bit of a sail-away production where they unfurl the Windstar flag while dramatic music plays. We found a drink and a spot in the shade (as usual, this is hard to come by) to watch the festivities which lasted a total of 5 minutes.

We hung out for another half an hour, showered and changed for dinner. Before we left we met Ede, our room attendant from Sumatra, Indonesia. 

Then our usual evening routine began…pre-dinner cocktail, dinner, show/post-dinner entertainment. I think our post dinner entertainment will mostly be listening to one of 2 ship musical groups – one duo, one a 4-piece band. They played a variety of music, and we didn’t hear Lady in Red once! It was mostly
70’s/80’s with a solid Disco set – fine with us so far. This small ship doesn’t have entertainment beyond listening to music.

The crowd is still older than we are, but is probably a bit younger than Regent, of course this always depends on the length of cruise, itinerary, and time of year, but in general that’s what it seems like. I’ve seen only one kid, a few multi-generation families – all very much like Regent.

under the Lisbon bridge

my dinner choices

We ate dinner in the main dining room. We are still figuring out this whole Al-In package. We know that any wine by the glass on the menu is fair-game – Irma our waitress suggested we try the night’s feature wine, I asked to make sure it was included – she assured me it was. However, we couldn’t find it on the menu…she again assured us it was indeed included. I guess Hannah (our bartender from earlier) told us not to over think things…we should have listened – there are plenty of wines to choose from, so we hardly want to pay extra if something isn’t included.

Dinner was fine…nothing knocked our socks off.