Wednesday, July 23 - 5:22 p.m.
Late Monday night, the crew had a rare party on deck -- usually their activities are confined to the crew bar. We're certainly glad they got to have some fun... unfortunately that fun came at our expense, as the party was held directly above our room and didn't begin until midnight. Had they simply sent a note to our room the day before saying what was going on and they apologize for the noise, we wouldn't have minded. Trying to hide the fact that this was a crew party (they called it a "Private Function", and denied it was a crew party when I called the Purser's Desk, but we'd already seen signs and the crew admitted it to us) was a bit annoying. Not to mention it ruined our sleep for most of the night.
After waking up briefly to send out laundry, we went back to sleep, then woke up shortly before 11 in order to go down to the dining room for a galley tour. This was our opportunity to see the main kitchen on the ship and see how they prepared meals for over 3200 people.
Just inside the galley doors, we found a single sheet that detailed everything we had eaten during the cruise. (I've got a larger version if anyone's interested.) 
Chef preparing plates of escargot (snails) 
Julie pointing to her favorite dessert -- Warm Chocolate Melting Cake 
And the recipe for that dessert 
After the galley tour, we went to lunch, then went to play for a bit in the casino. Bingo followed -- we never seem to win anything, but it's still fun to play -- and then we went to John Heald's "Blog Thingy Get Together" where readers of our cruise director's blog had a Q&A session with John. It was informative and entertaining, and John once again wishes us well in our relationship, and promised to send us goodies when we're on our honeymoon cruise. :) 
We went back to the cabin to relax a bit after the party and eventually get ready for dinner. It was the second formal night, so on went the formal dress and penguin suit (Julie wore the dress, Dave in the suit, in case anyone was unsure). 
Don't worry, there are lots of other pictures of us that we bought on our final sea day, so those will get scanned and posted when we get home.
At dinner, we enjoyed a nice meal, topped off with some of the fabulous desserts that had made our cruise a bad place to try to be healthy. Julie tended to order the Warm Chocolate Melting Cake and the Tropical Fruit Plate each night, while Dave generally ordered a couple of the different nightly offerings to try (tonight choosing the Baked Alaska and the Hazelnut Chocolate Cake). 
After dinner, we went "home" to our cabin and rested a while longer before going back to the dining room to take pictures of the gala buffet. Eating the gala buffet isn't necessarily recommended -- for an hour before the buffet is open to eat, hundreds of people wander through to take photos. Some of these people tend to touch the food -- occasionally to grab a piece to eat, but mostly to just see what it feels like. After all those hands touch food, I'm not too keen to eat it. Nonetheless, we took some photos to share. 
Once again, we leave you with pictures of both our Towel Princess (a flower instead of an animal -- the first time I've seen one that wasn't an animal) and our lovely sunset. 
