Day 7 -- February 8, 2015

Our last day on board the Carnival Triumph, along with 2,996 other cruisers, was relaxing if not exciting. Breakfast in the Paris Dining Room was actually brunch. We laugh at ourselves a lot, and we got a good chuckle when we seated ourselves at our assigned table, #470, thinking how smart we were to be able to take care of ourselves. The hostess followed us and politely informed us that we didn’t have our usual table for this meal, that it was open (unassigned) seating and that another hostess would have to seat us. Hmmm . . . sounded a bit strange to us until we saw the sign that we had passed up in our eagerness to do the right thing – HOSTESS WILL SEAT YOU. A bit embarrassing, but, hey . . . these people will never see us again. We could have danced on the tables!

The choices looked delectable, as always. And starters for breakfast? Well, after all, it was brunch, and brunch is always fancier than breakfast. Right? So I had a bagel with all the trimmings, two eggs over easy, bacon, and, be still my heart . . . cheese grits. The eggs were a bit underdone, but everything else was just right, especially the grits.

On a ship like this, there are lots of activities to choose from during the day, but there was only one that really interested us, so after relaxing with our books and taking a climb up to the top deck to see how everything up there looked, we met up with Claudia and Ivan and headed for the Rome Lounge (actually a big theater), where we were all set to laugh at the couples chosen to take part in “Love and Marriage,” an on-ship version of the old TV show “The Newlywed Game.”

After a bit of hoopla, the cruise director told us that there would be three couples who would participate. The first one, he chose . . . Alexander and Kim, our bride and groom, the newest wed folks on the ship. The next couple would be the couple who had been married the longest. Claudia and Ivan or Frank and I could have won hands down, but we didn’t want to “show off.” The Robbinses will celebrate their 50^th anniversary in September, and we just had our 53^rd in December. We just sat quietly as others vied for the “old folks’” spot on the stage. The “children” who won had been married only 46 years. The middle spot had to be auditioned for: the man had to do his best rendition of Tarzan and Jane. The first couple won. The big black man beat his chest, yelled, “AhhhhEeeeeAhhhh!,” picked “jane” up nimbly (quite a feat for she was no feather), and made as if to run off with her. Others tried to imitate him, but most couldn’t lift their hefty “Janes” or didn’t have the right volume or were too young to know really what to do.

They were asked ten questions. The men had to answer the way they thought their wives would, and the wives were to give their own true answers. The questions ranged from where the couple met with some description to who was the husband’s last girlfriend with a couple of words of description to where they last made “whoopee” so that it was never the same since to what the wife would say the husband’s most irritating habit was. The answers were hilarious! The black couple had the funniest answers, and the husband was good at guessing what his wife would say. The answer that broke the whole audience up was the husband’s most irritating habit. Remember that she said this, not me. She replied, “When he gets excited, he farts!” Oh, my . . . that’s almost TMI, don’t you think?

Claudia showed us the photo that she had taken earlier from the stern, and the pattern of the water amazed us. We HAD to go to the back of the ship to take our own photos. Absolutely beautiful! You’ll see it in the pictures.

I finished my novel a little before dinner and managed to squeeze in a short nap, too. Sleep No More was a bit more sexually graphic from what I usually read, but the descriptions were necessary for the story to unfold and wind up the way it did. Oh, dear . . . now there’ll be a run on the book either in the book store or on Amazon because you’ll be so curious! HaHa!

Our last dinner in the Paris Dining Room was a bit nostalgic because we knew it would be our last time to have Agus and/or Sudipta as our waiters. They were such polite gentlemen, and we loved having them serve us. The waiters all memorize the names of their diners and call them appropriately, no matter where they see them on the ship. Agus never forgot that I wanted to be called Sandy! Sudipta is a very handsome young man, and Agus has the proverbial (as we say in the South) “face that only a mother could love,” but we loved them equally. You’ll see them in tonight’s photos. Agus practically led all the waiters in a rousing Macarena toward the end of our meal. He was just full of personality even if he wasn’t the handsome one.

I must admit that I didn’t check the schedule very carefully on Friday and Saturday, so we weren’t aware that there was a musical every evening. Claudia and Ivan had happened upon the one of Friday – “Around the World in 80 Days,” featuring music and dancing from various countries. I wish we had known about that one because it sounded like the best show. Tonight, though, we knew that the show would be “The Big Easy,” and since our next destination will be New Orleans, we wanted to see that one. I’m not a jazz fan, so I didn’t enjoy the music much until the singers and dancers got to “Jambalaya” and “When the Saints Go Marching In.” Those were WONDERFUL! The costumes and dancing throughout were magnificent, and I drank in everything.

Back to our rooms after the performance to be sure that everything would be ready for early Monday morning, when we’d dock, debark, and be on our way for the rest of our trip!