Napier

We began the day in Napier. Napier was pretty well destroyed by an earthquake in 1931, and rebuilt itself in the then-popular art-deco style. Since then, while there have been some more modern (i.e. uglier) buildings put in, much of its downtown has an art-deco look.


Napier also has a wonderful ocean-front park with one of the best playgrounds we have seen. We are thinking of renaming the blog "Mickey visits the playgrounds of New Zealand". Here again, though, we had a crisis. Mickey was lost (for the second time this year!). Fortunately, he was picked up by a park cleaner, and he was recovered.


That afternoon, we drove to Wellington, where we had dinner at a Chinese "steamboat" restaurant. This consists of a pot of boiling water (half plain, half with spices) and more food than a family of 20 could eat. You put food in the water, and boil it yourself. We turned out to have a few "cook it yourself: where do you think you are, a restaurant?" type of meals this trip.