I was in no way immune. After choosing six shrimp one afternoon, I looked around, saw the heaping helpings all around me, and then added a few more shrimp to my plate. "Why not?" I thought, even though I would have never taken that many at home. At breakfast, I decided to get a sunny-side-up egg PLUS a bagel with salmon and cream cheese PLUS sausage PLUS a yogurt. How could I resist? There was nothing else to do. I started to wonder if the clever folks at Pixar modeled the Axiom in WALL-E on a cruise ship. The similarities are uncanny: large people lounging in chairs all day, unremittingly consuming from dawn to bedtime while staff sweep and serve around them. Red is the new blue! Shrimp cocktail for everyone!

Thankfully some sanity with proportions was found in the sit-down restaurants, which is where we dined most evenings. The helpings there were more moderate. The restaurants on the ship all serve the same daily menus, with each dining location adding its own specialty dish. Standard dinner fare included mignonettes --- the wait staff told us these were like little filet mignons although I'm pretty sure they weren't cut from the tenderloin -- with potatoes; fish in various types of cream sauces; pork chops with baked apples and sweet potatoes; and usually something more exotic like duck à l'orange. On New Year's Eve, everyone--and I mean everyone--had lobster. The quality of the food was equivalent to what you'd find at a mid-level hotel: under-seasoned, a bit dry, and trying too hard. Not horrible, but also nothing memorable. The most disappointing course was the dessert. The best cakes were simply okay, while others verged on spit-into-a-napkin horrible. We learned to stick with the ice cream sundaes.

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Dining on the Lido Deck