Our trip, onboard 2

After we watched the ship sail we looked around the decks and then went down to get ready for dinner. Our dining room was the Four Winds and our seating was at 6 p.m. We were assigned a table. When we got there we were seated in a booth with another couple. We became good friends with them quickly. They are from Rhode Island: the wife, Ulga, is Dominic Republican and the husband, Javier, is Puerto Rican. They were just slightly younger than us and were hoping to start a family. They two were celebrating their fifth anniversary. The husband was also in the military.

We had dinner with this couple every night and had the same waiter and bus boy every night. The dining room food was excellent but the buffet food was just run of the meal cafeteria food. We ate in the dining room as often as we could, every morning, every evening, and then the two lunches we were out to sea. The shore days they just had the buffet for lunch . They had pizza, ice cream, and room service opened 24 hours a day. During breakfast and lunch in the dining room we didn’t have an assigned table and was put with a different group every day. We met probably a dozen or so people on the ship because of that. Lunch and dinner was served in three courses, starter, entrées, and desserts.

That first night we ordered our starters, I got shrimp and Ray got a papaya smoothie. We laughed when we saw his. Mine was a little dish of fried shrimp. Ray got a plate with slices of fruit and four little dabs of the smoothie around the plate. At least our steaks came out pretty good size.

While on the ship I tried lobster and squid for the first time. Loved the lobster. The squid tasted okay just rubbery. That was from another one of Ray’s starters. He ordered what he thought was pasta but I had read the description. It said that it was a selection of Italian appetizers and so not knowing what that entailed I didn’t order it. Ray tried just a little bit of something that looked like a noodle, but it was not a noodle. Maybe it was a squid suction cup. I tried another thing that looked like really thin ham or bacon rolled up. That was pretty salty.

Our waiters, matre’d, and other dining room staff performed every night. One night our waiter talked Ulga and I into getting up and joining the conga line but it ended up being mostly a line of people just walking through the dining room.

(Our waiter made this doll for us one evening)

They also had shows every night. The first night was a comedy show. Since I hadn’t slept much and it was at 10:30 we foregone that and went to bed early.

The next night they had a dancing, singing show called “Xtreme Country.” That was the best of the shows by my opinion. I couldn’t take pictures of any of the shows because of copyright laws. The country show had two singers (a boy and a girl) and then about 12 dancers (3 boys and the rest girls) that would sing and dance to famous country songs. They made it into a little story line and it was very riveting.

The next night was a juggling and comedy act. We almost didn’t go to that one but we did. The juggler was pretty funny and at first I didn’t think he was really going to juggle much, just tell jokes but he finally got into it and it was very good. The comedian was also very funny. I was afraid he would get racy but because it was a family show he kept it cleaned. He did have an “R” rated act every night in one of the clubs.

The next night was a talent show for the ship’s passengers. Ulga, Javier, and us went to that for a few numbers. Now, that was very interesting. I think that we had a ship full of drunks and religious people, and maybe they were both that got up there. Everyone sang that we saw (and not very well) and most sang some song about Jesus. But some kept going on and on afterwards (that is why I think they might have had a few too much to drink.) Everyone that participated received a small trophy of the ship and a bottle of champagne. I am sure that is why some did it.

The final night was a show called Shout. It was also the singers and dancers. They sang songs from a bunch of different music genres. It was good but not as good as the country one because the story line didn’t flow as well.