The FUN ship!

Ah cruises...the sun, the water, the drinks, the food....the lots and lots of food...the Americans reacting to the food (is smoked salmon raw? no ma'am, it's smoked. Look at that, a real baguette!) all the while wearing insanely inappropriate t-shirts. My favorite from Villanova: "Freshman Girls, Get 'Em While They're Skinny!"

Yes I went on a cruise to the Eastern Caribbean. A Carnival cruise to be exact, a "fun ship" cruise to be more exact. (Side note: my favorite quote heard on the cruise, when a man was told he could not be drinking while in the hot tub. "Fun ship, HA!") It was awesome. Wonderful to get away and nice to come back crispy, red, a couple pounds heavier and a little be more relaxed.

The food was what you would expect it to be: buffets of fried things, meat things, salad bars things, surprisingly decent pizza, not as much lobster as we swear we were promised (and I will forever demand lobster of Carnival because of it) though it was excellent when we had it.

And then there was this:

Now, you may think that, according to the watermelon, this was an edible buffet.

You would be wrong.

It was a buffet of what would have been considered "nouvelle cuisine" back in the '80's, when such cuisine was actually nouvelle. Most of the ship, come to think of it, seemed to have recently discovered the '80's. Which, for me, is the best kind of vacation: a time traveling vacation.

Not to be out done by the other guests, I too took pictures of the food we couldn't eat.

OMGs! Shaped bread!

Squid! Oh my god, there's a ring of crispy around it! How does it stay up!?

I'm sorry to say that this was supposed to be stuffed pork loin.....er....

And of course a dragon ice sculpture. Because what gala buffet would be complete without one?

About an hour later we came back to the dining room to find that there was a line out the door...just to take photos. It was surreal.

As was this:

Our waiter for the week, Wency. You can't see it, but the man's wearing heels. He's a spectacular dancer with the best kicks I've seen since the Rockettes. Wency, I think we'll miss you the most.

Ah well. Good thing I live in New York, where there's a Wency around every corner, baguettes and real, not raw, but in fact smoked, salmon. But hey, Carnival, where's my F*%#ing lobster!?