We arrived at Napier Port early this morning. This is a much bigger port than those we had visited in the past few days. Other than logs, we could see lots of containers and ships around. Jerlene and Javier had chosen to stay on the ship in the past two days. Today, they decided to tag along with us to Napier town. We were surprised but after some questioning, there was actually a reason to it. In order to encourage them to get on shore with us, the staff at Ocean Adventure made them a promise. And that was to give them each a prize if they could produce some selfies to prove they were indeed in town.
After breakfast, we took the complimentary shuttle bus from the port to the city centre. We alighted at Napier i-SITE Visitor Information Centre. Beside it is the Napier Arch and Soundshell.
Street after street of stunning and beautifully-restored Art Deco buildings have made Napier famous as one of the most complete collections of Art Deco buildings in the world.
While walking along one of the streets, we saw this cute little Donuts stand. Javier could not resist donuts and bought one before we continued to explore the town.
A bit of history here. In 1931 a massive earthquake rocked Hawke's Bay for more than three minutes, killing nearly 260 and destroying the commercial centre of Napier. Rebuilding began almost immediately, and new buildings reflected the architectural styles of the times - Stripped Classical, Spanish Mission and Art Deco.
There were signboards around the different parts of the town showing photos of the disaster and how the town bounced right back. We spent quite a while to locate all six of these signboards.
As mentioned earlier, Jerlene and Javier had a "mission" to take selfies in the town. So they started working on it.
After covering most parts of the town, we walked towards the beach front to enjoy the sea breeze.
Though weather forecast predicted that it would rain today, we were glad that it was not accurate.
As we walked along the shore, we came upon a Sunken Gardens.
The flowers were so bright and colourful.
Another selfie time for Jerlene and Javier! Say cheese!
Guessed what we saw below? Yes, Mr Bean's famous car.....but no sign of him.
Jerlene and Javier were so glad that they had completed their "mission" and were very excited on our way back to the ship.
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