Food & fun all in one

We heard from our waiter that the cruise lines have a hard time keeping people coming to the dining room for dinner. I have NO idea why anyone would not want to go. First of all this is the dining room. It was so beautiful. I was in love with it. We were on the middle floor.
Then of course there was the FABULOUS food, and the fact that they would bring you as much as you wanted. More often than not most of us ordered multiple appetizers, entrees & desserts. Plus the food was beautifully presented as well.

Then there was the best part about the dining room, which is what kept me excited to go to dinner each night, and that was our wait staff.

The first person we typically saw each night was our assistant waiter, Jose. He was a very sweet, quite guy our age from the Dominican Republic. We came to learn he was the father of a little girl & had another baby girl on the way due before he finished his contract. He was on his first contract so he's still learning the ropes, but he did a fabulous job. He was always ready with Coke for the boys and chocolate milk for us girls every night when we got there. He quickly developed a closeness to Klint & Rik because they spoke Spanish to him, so he felt pretty comfortable with them. He was very fun & we loved him. It was Rik's birthday on the Thurs of our cruise. Klint & Jose had gotten talking about traditions in their various countries for birthdays. Jose said that in the Dominican Republic they pour cold water on your head. He told Rik that before his birthday & then had fun for days teasing him about if he was going to pour water on Rik. It was especially fun because Jose was the one that refilled our water so he was there with water multiple times each night.

Here's Jose acting like he's going to pour water on Rik on his birthday.

Another one of our fabulous wait staff was our head waiter Mimish. He was from Turkey & was so funny. He came over a few times each night to see how things were and goof around with us. He was always so sweet and genuine. He also really liked to give our waiter a hard time, so that was fun too. Here he is singing happy birthday to Rik on his birthday with some other staff members he brought with him to help sing.

Then there was our amazing main waiter Avni. He was a very youthful 23 year old kid from Turkey. He was GREAT at his job and LOTS of fun. He was especially funny when he would bring Heidi 2 entrees because he knew she wouldn't like the one that she ordered. Heidi gave him a first one night when she ordered 3 soups as her appetizers and he served 3 soups at once. He said that he would always remember us because he'd never done that before. We will surely never forget him. I just wanted to take him home with me, plus he always came with great food :) He also was very open about how he wanted to get a girlfriend and kept asking for tips from Rik, especially after he found out about Rik & Heidi have 8 kids. Here's Avni using the tops of butter dishes to accompany the happy birthday Mimish put together. Here's Avni & Jose working in their station.

A couple of nights the waiters all got together and did a little parading around the dining room and then on "Italian Night" they even sang. It was awesome. Every time they did Avni would waive his towel at us like this the whole time.Of course we would then waive back and holler and make lots of noise like this.

I don't know who this kid was, but I just thought it was too funny. Every time the wait staff did their little shows this kid wore napkins on his head like this.

Here we are with our amazing wait staff. We miss them TONS & I really wish we could have brought them home with us. We love you Avni, Jose, & Mimish!