Dinner, Shows, and Our First Night at Sea!

I’m not gonna lie – one of my most favorite parts of packing for this trip was picking out all the fun clothes and jewelry for our dress-up dinners. Ryan and I normally eat on the couch with two ottomans serving as our table {and we love that – no complaints!} – but the idea of getting all dressed up and pampered for meals was quite exciting to me.

I was so fortunate that my friend Kari had just gone on a cruise and was kind enough to share her clothing with me, so I didn’t have to buy much of anything for this trip! Thank you, Kari!! I wore one of her dresses to dinner the first night. It probably would have looked better on me later in the week when I had more sun!

So here was my dress…and jewelry….

And we went to dinner! The ship offered an anytime dining option and we took it – and we LOVED it. Since it was my first cruise, I didn’t know any differently, but apparently if you love the idea of having the same waiter every night and eating with the same people every night, this might not be the thing for you – but we just wanted the flexibility in our schedule, so it worked out SUPER for us. We could go to dinner whenever we wanted between 5 and 9. We ate early the first night – 

…shrimp cocktail and fresh fruit cocktail…

…tilapia and sweet and sour shrimp with shrimp fried rice noodles…

…chocolate melting cake and vanilla crème brulee…

And then we went out on the deck to take some pictures and watch the sunset {such as it was} and drink coffee. Heaven.

Then we went to the welcome aboard show, hosted by our cruise director. It was sort of a variety show – starting with a number by the cruise singers/dancers. I didn’t take a picture of that because you weren’t supposed to {that no photography rule took away my breath a few times this week!}.

Then the director brought three guys up on stage and quizzed them about their love lives and had them do a dance-off to with the title of Mr. Carnival Breeze for the week. The winner was Arthur, who was on the ship celebrating 31 years of marriage…and who recovered from falling onstage by giving the best dance of the night. {Took this picture from the TV later in the week! Arthur is on the far left.}

The evening finished off with a comedian {hi-larious} and then we got a late night snack and headed back to our room to find our first folded towel creation and make plans for the next day!