As a huge fan of Facebook’s Windstar Cruises Official Yacht Club Members & Fan Club page, it is totally satisfying to check out what fellow travelers want to know (or are experiencing onboard, often live!) about cruise. We love hearing your insights in letters that you write to us at Windstar headquarters and the comments you post here, on our blog. And, for insights from a different lens, we read the world’s top travel and lifestyle magazines and websites for insights on how to craft more interesting trips. Yet sometimes it’s tough to stay on top of everything.
In this occasional blog, we’ll try to make it easy for you to check out what travel professionals are saying about Windstar. Here are some of our favorite travel stories from 2026 so far.
Travel + Leisure on Windstar’s quick getaways
Most of the time my philosophy about a Windstar cruise is the longer the better. But that’s not always schedule-friendly in a busy world. Travel + Leisure highlights the line’s “Quick Getaways,” a new, three to five day itinerary option in Europe this summer on Star Pride. What makes it special? It’s a terrific “taster” experience if you’re new to Windstar and also a great way to tack on a short weekend getaway if you’re already in Europe. Note that the story appears only print edition of the magazine, its December 2025 – 2026 issue.
In Wallpaper*, the discussion turns to the small ship advantage
In Wallpaper, a publication that focuses on sophisticated design, art, culture and architecture, I loved this quote about why small and elegant ships are gaining greater awareness. “The new guard [of traveler]…wants vessels that go where bigger ships can’t reach – remote archipelagos, Arctic ice shelves, shallow Adriatic harbors or, in the case of Windstar’s Star Explorer, which also launches this December, up the Thames into central London along the Seine to Paris.” I’d add Star Seeker to that list, too and, come to think of it, also the Star Class ships that are offering itineraries that combine river and ocean ports of call.
How to make your next trip your most memorable journey ever?
The Busy Person’s Guide to Slow Travel: 20 Thoughtful Trips for Every Type of Traveler, in Afar, caught my eye. It offers suggestions on both land holidays and sea voyages, with categories you’d probably expect such as nature, health and wellness, arts and culture, adventure and food and drink. What’s particularly intriguing here is that the trips being profiled are not at all among the ordinary.
I can’t decide, at just this moment, whether I should opt for a spiritual luxury getaway to the Himalayas or try my hand at trout fishing in Colorado. For this Francophile, the trip on Afar’s fabulous list that most appeals, however, is Windstar’s French Feast: Normandy, Brittany and Aquitaine, a French-focused James Beard Foundation voyage, led by Alsatian chef Gabriel Kreuther. The seven-night cruise travels between Paris/Rouen and Bordeaux, with stops to visit top food purveyors in places like Honfleur (featured as our cover photo above), St.-Malo, Guernsey, and Lorient along the way. Procrastinators, know this: There’s no time to waste. It departs this August.
We’ll help keep you posted on the latest insightful travel stories as we unearth them. Let us know if we’ve missed one that’s inspired you.
