Art Deco Capital of the World

1930's classic car
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Arriving the night before we just missed the end of the Art Deco Festival.

We spent the morning exploring the numerous art deco buildings throughout Napier. Our 'personalized' tour had only one other couple in it. Napier is a beautiiful city located directly along the shore of the Pacific Ocean. It has a lovely boardwalk along the shore with several garden areas all perfectly manicured. Napier has several great restaurants with Acqua, located in the historic Masonic hotel, standing as the best seafood restaurant I ate at in New Zealand.

With much hesitation and fear...

Historic Masonic Hotel
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There was lots of great shopping across the streets of Napier with possum fur being the prize souvenier. You can get practically any piece of clothing made from a possum/merino wool material. It is soft, warm, light weight and INCREDIBLY expensive! After buying socks (the cheapest) and a possum fur ball for our cats - that's right we buy gifts for our cats on vacation. We are so not weird.

After our purchases we headed off to Wellington stopping to eat in Hastings. We took a chance at a dark roadside bar in a strip mall. With a name like Horse and Hound Grill it had to be fabulous, right? With much hesitation and fear about making a bad decision we felt our hunger forcing us inside and ordering. We waited on the sun drenched patio with a tall mug of ice cold Speights. As we set fretting about the quality of food, mostly Sara and picturing a gross glob of fried fish with limp lettuce and an unripe tomato she was extremely pleasantly surprisved by what was brought out. A nice thick filet with enough vegetables on top to call it a salad. It was the BEST fish sandwich we have ever eaten. So even though it has a bad name - go inside for the good food. Despite the immense sighs we both managed to eat the entire sandwich. With full stomachs we continuted the lovely drive down to Wellington.