We rose to a lovely sunny day in Napier, a great improvement over yesterday's afternoon and evening rain. We had a quick walking tour of Napier, which had to be rebuilt completely after the 1931 earthquake. Before the earthquake, it was reputedly quite a seedy place, full of sailors and whalers; it is alleged that Mark Twain visited it, and said 'See Napier and spit'! It was small too - much of the area where the town now stands was lagoon and swamp.
After the earthquake, which destroyed the whole town, the land had risen by at least 2 metres, so there was more flat land. The town was re-built in the Art Deco style, as concrete was felt to be a safer building material in an earthquake prone area; the concrete could be reinforced with steel rods, and the Art Deco style was popular at the time. It was not until the 1980s that the town realised how wonderful the buildings were and stopped knocking them down to 'modernise' the town. Many of them are now painted in pastel colours, with the decoration picked out in stronger colours. One of the real jewels is the Daily Telegraph building.
Just behind the Telegraph building is the church, which was about to hold the Sunday service. The church bells were very loud and the peals long and complicated, which made the Tour Guide's commentary hard to follow.
Another outstanding building is the theatre.
I must have more than 50 photographs of these wonderful buildings, but I can't put them all here. This last one is of the Art Deco Trust.
After the tour, we were soon back in the bus and driving through the fruit bowl of New Zealand; the area is flat, and all you can see are vines and orchards. The area grows all sorts of stone and pip fruit. Later, with slightly hillier land, we passed on to sheep farming areas and drove through a variety of small towns with some vaguely Art Deco buildings. We stopped for lunch in Masterton; there were some vaguely Art Deco buildings here too, but nothing nearly as good as Napier; I only photographed the lovely little fire station
and the charmingly quirky bullock dray. The dray itself was built in 1900 to carry the town's wool clip to market, and was normally drawn by 8 bullocks.
Soon after Masterton, the road started to climb high into the hills, and then to descend, round a series of terrifying hairpin bends; I did manage a few pictures this time through the bus window, but they aren't great. This one shows some roadworks, but you can just see the road snaking away in the distance.
Eventually, we arrived in Wellington in time to photograph the Parliament building and legislative offices,
and the building used to house some of the archives, which to my mind is much more attractive. It used to be a church.
After that, we went back to the museum Te Papa Tongarewa, where we had a guided tour which had been booked for our group. We had time to see some things we had not seen before - like this feather cloak and helmet presented to Captain Cook in Hawaii.
After checking in to the hotel, we took the cable car back up the hillside again, but this time we walked down to town through the Botanical Gardens. The road is steep and winding,
and by the time we had reached the town again and found a restaurant for dinner, we had been walking for two hours!
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