2018 – Part 41 – Day in Napier

2018 – Part 41 – What to do in Napier?

We had a full day to explore Napier.  What’s in Napier?  It’s located in a wine region of New Zealand, home to the National Aquarium, and its downtown is one of a few that were built in an Art Deco style.

National Aquarium of New Zealand

This attraction was the main reason for us to make the cross country drive from Auckland airport east to Napier.  Amber’s list was straight forward — animals!  The Aquarium isn’t just fish.  The three highlights, for us, from the Aquarium weren’t fish at all.

The first highlight was watching the turtles being fed.  Process sounds simple; the turtles have to exit the water, grab a piece of food, return to the water where the turtles eat their food.

Sounds simple.  Except that the turtles aren’t lining up to wait to get a piece of food.  Instead the moment a piece of food is in a mouth, the other turtles chase that turtle trying to steal the food.  Even in the water with food in their mouth, now fish joined in attempting to grab food straight from the mouth of a turtle:

As mentioned the evening before by the bartender, the Aquarium is not large, however there are many things to see.  Before are a few items that caught our attention as we walked through it:

The second highlight was seeing a kiwi.  This nocturnal, poor eye-sighted, flightless bird is a national symbol.  The Aquarium had an enclosure where we could see one.  As the animal is nocturnal, without a tripod, the pictures from the enclosure did not turn out well.

Kiwi Enclosure

Kiwi!

The third highlight, was the penguin enclosure.  These are the same species of penguins that we saw at Phillip Island.  As the Aquarium wasn’t busy we spent a lot time around the penguins.

After the Aquarium it was time to find lunch!

Wineries

We headed out to a winery.  The one I selected was based on the fact that they had a Riesling on the menu.  As we drove towards the main building, another New Zealand feature greeted us, sheep.

We had lunch outside, and enjoyed our meal.  Amber enjoyed their resident cat who made a visit during our meal.

With lunch complete we headed back downtown. 

Art Deco!

Napier had a massive earthquake in 1931, and the downtown, when reconstructed buildings were constructed in the Art Deco style.  Supposedly, this is one of a handful of communities that have such a concentration of these styled buildings:

We had an afternoon snack while walking around.  Amber had found a place where the filling for the doughnut is delivered in a syringe!

And some of the fillings came with alcohol.

Finally, we took time to enjoy the intensity of the ocean after visiting the Aquarium.  The sound from the surf was intense!

It was a busy day in Napier, however with everything being relatively close it wasn’t a hectic day rushing around.

Read more about our trip by clicking here.