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!

Goldfish, Games, Cherry Blossoms, and Packages

I am going to take a small break from blogging about our trip to share what we have been up this week (before I forget!). Check back for our afternoon in Napier!

On Wednesday I went to my weekly women's Bible study at the chapel and left Grace in the childcare which is provided. When I went to pick her up they told me how good she was (she doesn't like me to leave her and they have actually brought her to me once because she was so upset... she is getting MUCH better though!) and then they said she ate a lot of goldfish. She had never had goldfish before... I actually never even thought of goldfish for a snack. But they told me she loved them and cried when she had ate them all! So guess what she had for a snack yesterday? Yep! GOLDFISH!!

Yesterday we went with our friends Kelly and Maggie to a Cherry Blossom festival at a park in Naha. I think the cherry blossoms were much better this year than last!

{Pretty pink trees}

This was one of the best trees but you can't see much of it! This is also about the best picture we got of Grace and Maggie. As soon as one of them would look at the camera the other would look away.

We got to play on the little playground. Maggie had fun in the sand and Grace had fun following Maggie around!

{Looking at the water}

{just like a picture we have from last year}

{say CHEESE!}

{Sharing cherry blossoms that they picked up off the ground}

Grace also has a new game she likes to play. She tries to get her Daddy to chase her! Here is a video of her playing the other night... we played this for probably about 15 min!

Do you remember when I posted about a couple giveaways before our vacation? Well, I was checking my email one evening on the ship and saw that I had won one of them!!! And yesterday I got it in the mail! Allison makes some really cool little items from felt and she sent me this:

{picture taken from her store - 'Cause I Felt Like It}

Thanks Allison!!

Tauranga

We had booked a cruise tour for Tauranga because there was a geyser park that we read was about a 90 min drive and we thought this would probably be the best way to see it. In hindsight, we probably should have just hired a private tour company but we did get to see what we had planned and we still had a good time.

Grace decided she wanted to sleep in this morning so we were rushing to get to the meeting point on time. Dustin brought back breakfast (there wasn't even enough time to call for room service!) and Grace finally woke up 10 minutes before meeting time. Dustin took the stairs with her and the food while I waited with the stroller and all of our gear for a lift. After seeing the elevator come and go multiple times without one opening with enough room for the stroller I took the stairs too because I did not want to miss the tour. I had also lost one of my earrings in our room either the night before or that morning so the day didn't get off to the best start (we never found the earring... both us and the room attendant searched the room for it too). We ended up just waiting beside the line to get your bus number until it came to the end so that Grace would have time to eat breakfast. We ended up with bus number 11 out of the 12 buses. I think 8 of them were all doing the exact same tour as us too which is a LOT of people.

So finally we made it to our bus and were ready to go. Our first stop was morning tea at the Blue Baths. There was an entire museum but all I saw of it was the men's dressing area which is where they herded us through to get to the area set up for tea.

{the Blue Baths}

I honestly did not see the front of the building because we were herded in so fast that Dustin had to tell me which picture to use. He had a few minutes to look around and take pictures while I found a restroom to change Grace's diaper. I think we had a total of 20 minutes to spend here which included getting off the bus and going through a line of 3 bus loads of people.

{Having tea in an old pools}

Then we were back on the bus for our next stop which was Te Puia. Here we met up with a tour guide who took us to the kiwi house. We found out later that the kiwi birds had been scared away when a guest on a bus ahead of us went in and shouted "Why is it so dark in here?" after being informed that the birds have sensitive ears. So we think we may have seen a little of a kiwi bird but it is hard to say since it could have easily been a piece of bush. Then it was back to the tour.

{we saw boiling mud}

{and a geyser... this was taken right before it erupted}

Then they gave us about 15 minutes to look around at the Maori village in the park or visit the gift shop.

{Maori village}

Dustin and Grace ran around the grass while I headed to the gift shop for a few souvenirs.

We thought we were finished with the tour but we were told we had one more stop. The tour was supposed to include some shopping so we stopped at the kiwi 360 farm (kiwi fruit) where they gave us an hour! It was going to be well past lunch time when we got back to the ship (we thought we would be back at 1:00) so we grabbed a bite to eat at the cafe and then let Grace run around in the yard since that was about all there was to do there.

{At Kiwi 360)

So the reason we would have done a private tour instead is because everywhere we went we were rushed except at the kiwi farm and there were always 3 buses of people or more at each of our stops. With a private tour we probably could have gone to another geyser that was not at a huge tourist attraction plus saw a lot of the area and spent the amount of time at each place that we wanted to. But we did get to see the geyser erupt which was one of the things we wanted to see most at this port so overall it was a good day, just one we would do differently if we had a do-over.

Auckland

We had just a little bit planned for Auckland so it was easy to do everything we wanted. It ended up being a very fun day for all of us! First off, we got off the ship and walked to the sky tower. Our plans were to go to the Kelly Tarleton's Underwater World and Antarctic Encounter and I had read on their website that they ran a free shuttle which made two stops and one was the sky tower. The other stop was just listed as an address so I figured the sky tower would be easy to find and we wanted to see that too. We didn't go up in the tower because we were being cheap and had gone up to the top of Taipei 101 so when we got there we asked around until someone could tell us where the shuttle pick-up point was.

{Auckland Tower}

We waited for the shuttle for just a few minutes and then we saw the Shark Bus appear! We meant to get a picture but totally forgot but the bus had shark fins on top and a huge shark jaw at the front so it looked like a shark. When we got on we saw some people who were on our cruise already on the bus. Turns out the other pick-up point is at the port where we got off the ship. Oh well, we got to take the scenic route and get some exercise.

Kelly Tarleton's was very neat. There was section where we learned about penguins.

{Grace enjoyed the frigid water!}

{Brrrrr!!!}


They had snowcats which was like an enclosed kiddie roller coaster but it took you through the penguin habitat. The one in the pictures is just a display but looks like what we road in.

{snowcat}

{driving the snowcat}

There was a chalkboard with directions to draw a penguin.

Grace trying her hand at drawing a penguin... she decided it would be more fun to run off with the chalk and then we she had to leave it behind she got upset so a man that was passing by with his daughter gave her chocolate.

Then we went for a ride on the snowcat. I think this was the best part of the entire museum!

{Looking out the window at the penguins}

There was one area where we could watch them fly through water!

Then we moved on to the aquarium section. We are a bit spoiled since we have the world's second largest aquarium here and Kelly Tarleton's is MUCH smaller. So we didn't spend a lot of time in this part.

{Jaws}

After spending some time in the gift shop we decided to walk down to a popular area to find some lunch.

{leading the way}

The walk ended up being a LOT further than we had thought. But once we got there we found out why it was so popular.

{the beach and park}

There were several cafes and a few fast food restaurants. We decided to eat at a place called Oporo which we thought looked similar to Chick-fil-a. Let me just say that I don't think there is any comparison with Chick-fil-a! After lunch we headed across the street to find what we thought was the world famous ice cream the bus driver had mentioned. We later discovered that the world famous ice cream (which was also in the tourist book I had taken along from the library) was about a block down the road. The park made up for us not getting the right ice cream though!

After Grace had gone down the slide a LOT and played on the swing for a very long time (she kept telling me she wasn't ready to leave when I asked her if she was done) we walked down to the beach.

After walking around for a bit we decided it was time to start heading back to the ship. We wanted to stop at a supermarket on our way and I had asked a group of moms where would be best for us to stop and they had given us directions to one a couple blocks from the ship and told us where to find the bus that would pass right by. There is a reason we wanted to find a supermarket. We had taken Grace some snacks like graham crackers and her yogurt melts but we had also thought we would be able to take some things from the ship into port with us. But Australia and New Zealand had VERY strict quarantine laws and we were told we could not even take water unless it was in a brand new and sealed bottle. So we emptied Grace's snacks from the backpack before we headed of the ship in Bay of Islands. When the lady from customs saw us come by with Grace she asked if we had any food for the baby and we told her that we had left it all behind because they had been announcing all morning that nothing consumable was allowed to be taken off the ship. She told us that as long as we had packaged food items for Grace we would have no problem taking them into port with us. Well, graham crackers and yogurt melts don't stay in an unopened package very long so we decided to find some snacks for Grace. We had the bus driver drop us off at the Countdown and off we went. It was so nice to be in a real grocery store again! We found lots of little snacks for Grace, some bottled water for us (MUCH cheaper than the water they sold on the ship), some candy, and a new Little People train for Grace! We spent a long time in the store and walked up and down all of the aisles. Then we made the short walk to the ship. On the way back Grace fell asleep and we still had a couple of hours until we had to be on board so Dustin took everything we bought back to our cabin while I waited outside under a shade tree with Grace. We had to go through security and take Grace out of the stroller and we knew she needed her rest. We were even able to grab a couple of tacos from a Mexican cafe since we had been looking for a Mexican place for lunch and never found it but saw one right next to the ship!

Overall, Auckland was one of our favorite ports just because we never once rushed. We were able to let Grace enjoy the park and got some fresh ocean air!

Check back for more of our cruise adventures... our next stop is Tauranga!

Bay of Islands

After spending two days at sea we reached Bay of Islands, New Zealand. We anchored in the middle of all the small islands and tendered to a port near Paihia (they pronounce it pie-here in a crocodile dundee accent) where we got on a bus to take us into town.

{our ship in the middle of the islands}

{the tender that left right ahead of us}

We didn't realize that it would take so long to get on the tender (we waited for over an hour before they called our number to leave) so once we got into the town we only had about 20 minutes to look around before our dolphin cruise started.

{Grace leading the way with the map}

Paihia was a cute little town that obviously thrives off of the tourism they get from cruise ships. There were so many little souvenir shops! We found a Christmas ornament for Grace of a native New Zealand bird.

{shopping district}

After a little shopping, we boarded a big ferry for our dolphin cruise. We saw some dolphins which was pretty cool! Here is a video of some of the dolphins we saw.

Then we kept on going to Hole in the Rock.

{Hole in the Rock}

We were actually able to go through the hole in our big boat!

{inside hole in the rock}

Then it was time to head back to Paihia so we could catch the shuttle back to the port and get a tender back to the ship. It was a short day but it was nice to get off the ship and onto solid ground!