I woke up this morning to a cold, windy and rainy morning. I was nearly covered in Gore-Tex from head to toe when I left the ship in the morning (my Red Wing boots are waterproof, but not Gore-Tex unlike my pants, coat (with a hood), and gloves. Mysteriously the rain let up almost immediately after the shuttle dropped me off at the visitor center.
I wandered around the city a bit to see the Art Deco buildings. I wanted to use the self guided tour, but Google Play was not behaving. The self guided option seemed like a good idea because it’s only $4.49, which is much cheaper than the $24NZD guided tour.
I then walked to the Faraday Centre, which is #2 of the things to do in Napier. It was $9NZD, and although it was small, they had a few interesting exhibits… including a manual drill press, lathe and grinder. It was really cool to see tools before electricity. They also had one of the old engines and generators as well as a small cutaway engine you could rotate. Another cool item was an old pool table – before they invented flippers. I played it a bit.
From the Faraday Centre I walked back towards the visitor center to Starbucks in an attempt to use their Wi-Fi to update my blog with photos, but that failed. I then took the shuttle bus to the a aquarium and walked back to the visitor center along the beach. The beach had no sand, but very small pebbles.
I stopped in the MTG museum, small but free. They had some nice Maori carvings (sorry no pictures allowed in the Maori exhibit, but they did allow photographs in the funky exhibition made from plastic bottle.
I eventually made my way back to the ship. At the pier they had several antique cars on display. After I got back on the ship I actually started to post process some of my photos.
For dinner… well I actually needed a German menu to confirm my suspicion about one item… the English menu says ‘pork shank’. The German menu said ‘Haxe’ which is what I thought it would be. I had the french onion soup, escargot, pork knuckle (Haxe), and creme brulee for dinner.
The circus firemen show was okay, I wouldn’t say spectacular, but obviously I couldn’t do what they do balancing themselves on ladders.