Carnival Elation Day 2 – Cruisin’

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, HUSBAND!!! We both woke up pretty early and I offered to go to the gym with him but he insisted that he was not going to drag his wife to the gym on our anniversary. Smart boy! But I would have gladly gone without complaint as a gift to him. Instead, we stayed in bed most of the morning, napping on and off. We finally got up and headed to the lido deck, just catching the end of the breakfast buffet. After stuffing ourselves (I heart breakfast foods!), we took a long stroll around the upper decks enjoying the view and breeze but unable to find adequate shade.

hubby's favorite part of a cruise ship is the ice cream machines. especially when they have strawberry frozen yogurt!

the main lobby/atrium

main lobby/atrium

main lobby/atrium

We finally made our way back to our cabin and ran into Alit, who called us by name, in the hall. We had a long conversation with him and learned that he had a wife who was working on the ship as well and a three year old son back at home with his parents in Indonesia. I really enjoy talking to him and I hope that he does not grow weary of us throughout the week. Between the breakfast and the sun from walking around, we passed out! We made it back out of the room for a late afternoon lunch and then lounged by the pool for a while before heading back to the room to get dressed up for elegant night.

mirror pic

On our way to the early show (for the late diners), we stopped to have our photo taken at a couple of booths and then did our own on the stairs.

obligatory "elegant night" staircase photo

The main show tonight was called Just Rock and was a singing/dancing compilation of 50s-80s era light-rock. Overall, it was an enjoyable show. The dancers were all very good, as they were last night, but there was one guy that stood out to me and I wish I had found out his name. There are two singers, Lizzie and Troy. After two shows now, I would say that the female vocalist is definitely the stronger of the two. The male was all over the place and I am finding his voice grating at times. I think there’s only going to be one other show this week with the singers/dancers so he’ll have one more chance to redeem himself or seal my opinion.  Before dinner, we stopped back by the room to pour a couple glasses of the wine we had brought from home as an anniversary treat – a yummy semi-sweet blueberry wine from Panama City Beach Winery. It paired very well with my pasta carbonara and hubby’s lobster.

our anniversary toast was blueberry wine from home. yummy!

When we entered the room, we found that Alit had left us a special anniversary surprise.

towel animal du jour: love swans! our anniversary gift from Alit

He also must have called the dining room and told our waiters, Georgica (Romania) and Christopher (Philippines), because they brought a piece of cake and sang happy anniversary to us after dinner. It was a lovely celebration of seven years of marriage.

hubby's apple-something-or-other-dessert. i thought it was pretty. he thought chocolate melting cake would have been better.

When we had eaten and finished our wine, we made our way up to the comedy lounge for the last two performances of the night – adult comedy from both Mr Hawkins and Mr Sibley. Here is where I must make my first complaint… there were five comedy shows this evening, two GA and three AO. The GA shows were at 19:30, during the main show for the late diners, and 20:30, during the late dinner. So we missed both of those. Early diners, however were able to catch both those shows and still see their main show as well. I just felt that the scheduling was pretty crappy and wish that we didn’t have to choose which show to go to just because we were part of the late diners. We left the dining room as soon as we were through with dessert and made it about half-way through the first AO show, which was Mr Sibley. We arrived just in time for a hilarious bit about Bin Laden and thoroughly enjoyed the rest of his act. Happily, the last show of the night was a repeat so we got to see the whole thing after all and got to see the differences in his delivery the first time around versus the second time. Sandwiched between those was Mr Hawkins’ AO performance which was completely different material from last night’s and still laugh-worthy.  

i was playing around with the "color swap" mode on the camera, making his blue shirt red. we had time to kill between comedians.

i appreciate that they are bringing more comedy to the cruises