Napier

I decided to go ahead and write about Napier since I had a bit of free time.. We aren't doing much this afternoon but tonight we are having Kelly & Maggie over for dinner. We had planned on watching Maggie tonight but Kelly no longer needed us to so we invited them over anyway because Grace loves playing with Maggie and Maggie loves playing with Grace's toys. And tomorrow will be another busy day. We are going to another friends house for breakfast and so she and I can plan the coffee we are hosting on Friday.

If you didn't see the post about the cherry blossoms, well, you are missing out! Scroll down after this post or click HERE

This was another short day. We didn't arrive at the port until noon and the last shuttle was at 5:00. But we had some big plans! There is not much that we love more than chocolate. Even Grace has developed a love for chocolate at such an early age (imagine how much she loved the bag of chocolates she got sent for valentines day). So we made a visit to a small chocolate shop where they make their own chocolates! We did the Triple Dipper tour so we got to go to the shop and watch them make chocolate and we got a brief talk on the process. We picked out a few things to buy and they gave us our gift - a small box of chocolates! Then we went to the Chocolate Through the Ages museum where we got a little history on chocolate. And finally we stopped by the cafe where we were able to choose a chocolate dessert and a chocolate drink. We chose Ice Chocolate for our drink and it was so yummy!!! We realized it was almost time for the city bus to be passing by so we packed up everything just in time to make it to the road before the bus and headed back to town.

{Silky Oak Chocolate Factory}

{8 kg of chocolate}

{Ice Chocolate}

{Grace LOVED the Ice Chocolate!}

Napier was pretty much destroyed by an earthquake in 1931 and when they rebuilt the city they used an Art Deco theme. Now it is known as the Art Deco capital of the world! We walked down the little shopping district which was filled with little boutiques. At some point Grace threw off her hat and we didn't realize it until we were leaving a department store. After much searching Dustin found it down the street on a table outside of a cafe. I had searched the department store we were in and even sought out a new hat which we ended up buying just in case it happened again (which it did!).

Here are a few pictures from the shopping district. Most all of the buildings use the art deco style.

Before we went back to the ship we decided to check out the beach that was right by the shuttle stop. The beach was BLACK!

And people were actually laying out on the beach!

{Closeup of the rocks on the beach}

When we got back to the ship they had several classic cars on display and this band was playing.

Overall it was another fun day. I think the ice chocolate was the highlight though!