The dinner table....

Jason had meticulously planned every detail of our trip and after talking with some friends that are cruise enthusiasts, they recommended being seated at a big table at the early seating. Because you eat with the same people every night a big table gives you the opportunity to meet people from all over the world. Well, as Deaton luck would have it, we got a small table at the late seating. After really looking around the room and realizing the median age was about 60, we were becoming discouraged.

Then, walked in Julie and Chris. Newlyweds from Virginia. Our age, our interests, our kind of people! They had just been married two days before and were absolutely adorable. They had a really great love story, one that every girl just loves to hear. You know, the one where they look across the room and BAM! Kind of like that. In any case, Jason and I were excited to see that there were some people our age. We chatted until late into the night - easy to do when dinner is at 8:30!

Cruises are all about one thing - food. And a lot of it. For those of us - like myself - who love to eat and have a hard time turning away food it is a miserable place to be :) There is always a buffet open somewhere and you always have access to just about anything you want. I was worried about this. As I mentioned, I really like food. But, amazingly enough it was not nearly tempting as I thought it would be. But, dinner was a new experience. It is nothing less than gluttony. All you do is eat. And eat. And eat. Want 2 lobsters? No problem! How about 4? Sure thing, coming right up. And, that's how every dinner we had went once we met Chris and Julie Matthews. I've never seen such skinny people devour that much! Chris and Jason routinely had 4 servings of shrimp cocktails every night...so much so that the wait staff had them waiting for us when we got to the table. There were usually at least two entrees eaten at every meal and no less than 6 desserts at any one time. After the first night's dinner we decided to make a pact that we would take the stairs everywhere we went or we were going to gain 100 pounds before we got home!

There is usually some kind of singing act from the wait staff...boy, do they love to sing! One of the servers behind us made a bunny rabbit out of a towel and used that as his prop. Here's just a taste of what we saw every night.

We ended up spending most of the trip with Chris and Julie. We had so much fun hanging out with them and getting to know them! The picture below is from the Captain's dinner. Lobster, Filet Mignon, great wine....yum!