New Zealand: Day 4

Day 4 in New Zealand began with mincemeat pie (interesting, but I have no desire to eat it again). We headed out for a drive to Napier. It's in wine country, in Hawke's Bay, and was a good stopping place on our way to the wedding. The countryside was, again, very beautiful.

A vineyard

It was suggested by the natives that we get fish & chips at some point during our trip. We were instructed to go to a place with a big sign that said "Fish & Chips", so we knew that was their specialty. We spotted one in town and stopped to try it out. We knew it was a good choice when the lady wrapped our food up in newspaper (another "must", according to friends). I'm not a big fan of things fried, so my yum-yum face was just for the picture.

This is what it looked like. The fish filets were very nice, before being breaded and fried. And they gave us TONS of fries, er, chips...

so we fed our bird friends a few.

This was our hotel in Napier. Jim found it online, and it turned out to be a STEAL! Not only was it inexpensive, but we could see the water from our own deck, and it had a spa tub in the room!

This is what we saw from our room:

After unloading at the hotel, we started sight-seeing. Napier has an interesting history. There was a huge earthquake in 1930 that demolished the whole town and forced survivors to rebuild. Because it was popular at the time, most of the buildings in the center of town are art-deco style. We have lots of pictures of the buildings, but I'm just posting a few of my favorites.

This is for Holly D. Notice that is says "Asher Hall" over the door. :)

I had the camera for awhile so I could get some shots of Jim. He was getting tired of me snapping away. Here he is telling me to stop photographing him. He's just so cute...

Isn't this beautiful?

This is the garden just in front of the waterfall.

We decided to do a Duck Tour so we could see the whole town while learning more about its history. It turned out to be a good choice! We were the only two passengers, and we saw a lot more than we could have on foot. We also got to be on the water a bit.

Our tour guide, Kim.

This was my favorite building. It was in a different part of town than the other art-deco buildings. We saw it on the tour.

After the Duck Tour, we walked around some more, then tried to find a place to eat. We drove to the old church (you'll see that later), only to find out there was a wedding that evening and they weren't serving dinner. We headed back to the hotel, but not without stopping at a farmer's market. They had the most scrumptious-looking produce! We got some grapes (we were in wine country, after all), melon, corn, and peaches. Yummy. The lady who sold it to us had the thickest, strongest hands I had ever seen on a woman. She was definitely a hard-working woman, and I admired her.

Most of the town closes down at 5pm, so it was tricky finding a place to eat dinner. We ended up at a Turkish kebab restaurant, and we both LOVED it. We ordered doner kebabs, which are wraps filled with fresh veggies, chicken or beef, and sauces of your choice. They were to DIE for. We left very happy, having spent a mere $7 on a delectable healthy meal. The hummus and bread were the best we'd ever had.

Next, per Kim's suggestion, we headed up to the lookout where you can see all of Hawke's Bay from one spot. As we were driving up, the sky was beginning to change color and I was afraid we would miss the sunset. We rushed out of the car with the camera. As it happened, the sky only got more brilliant over the next 15 minutes or so, until it was on fire with color.

Talk about great timing!

We thought the boys would love this. There was a loading dock below the lookout.


We passed by this fountain on our way back to the hotel. It changed from blue to pink, red, orange, purple, and green.

A nice lady took our picture, and I think it would have been so cute if it had been in focus. Oh, well. It was the perfect end to yet another perfect day.