Couples Only Cruise ~ Smackerels of Escargot

After a little more window shopping an taking a seat in Sessions to listen to the pianist for a while I started to really notice how late they pushed late dining with the fog delay. Second seating still didn't begin until 8:45 and I definitely started pulling a Winnie the Pooh.
I needed a smackerel of some sort of snack, but dinner started really soon so I just decided to hold off and wait for our dinner. Finally, dinner time! Ben and I walked through Beat Street to Lumiere’s past the line up for pre-dinner photos and after a quick peek at one of my favorite hidden Mickeys, headed into the dining room.

Hey Mickey!

The servers escorted us to table 68. I don’t know if it was because of our location in the dining room or just the particular group of tables adjoining ours, but it seemed extra noisy in Lumiere’s this evening. The servers waited for Chris and Casey to join us. Chris showed up shortly, but Casey felt like staying in and wouldn’t be joining us that evening. Our server came over and checked if we were all acquainted during a lull in the conversation. (We all needed a nap at this point, so it wasn’t so much the company as the hour.) Our assistant server seemed to be very sweet, very enthusiastic and a bit difficult to understand. Since the dining room seemed extra loud, we chalked any difficulty understanding her up to ambient noise (the following evening we came to discover it wasn’t).
Ben decided to brave the escargot gratinee  (yes, herb and butter braised snails) while I waited for my traditional first evening meal of grilled marinated tofu, zucchini, eggplant and red peppers over a couscous.

Add enough garlic and butter to anything and Ben will try it.

Ben enjoyed his snails.
Immensely.

What can I say? He's an enthusiastic eater.

Apparently anything tastes good if you cook it in enough garlic and butter.
He says they remind him of mussels or calamari in texture. The bread, warm and crusty, disappeared quickly into the butter sauce dip. He says he liked it and would order it again.
Thankfully being vegan excuses me from eating gastropods.

I found the French country bread warm and tasty and could live on the olive spread. Chris seemed to enjoy his dinner, though by this point the ship movement became a bit noticeable and the dining room started to empty out.

Our desserts arrived (mine fruity, the men opted for chocolate). Then our server asked if we wanted a takeaway meal order (so we could bring some down to Casey.) We hung around for a bit and discussed the sea day for tomorrow. 

We dropped Casey’s meal and Chris off at their room then decided to go to sleep for the night.

This post is Part Six in an Ongoing Trip Report Couples Only Cruise. I'm so thankful for my vacations and I figure reviewing them is half the fun!I am going to try to get all of my trip reports from 2013 finished up over the next several weeks so be on the look out for scads of updates!