The Road trip: Day 3 Napier

Today we set off for Napier, New Zealand’s Art Deco capital! Napier is Hawke’s Bay’s largest city. Hawke’s Bay you say? It reminds me of something…. And so it should, it is one of the two major wine producing regions in New Zealand so you are more than likely to have seen wines like Trinity Hill gracing the selves of Odd Bins in the UK.

On our way to Napier we stopped at Whitebay, a lavender farm. Lavender is one of my favourite smells so this was paradise for me! The farm was not too big but had a small shop on the side where they made and sold a number of lavender based products. You could get anything from bath oils to lavender jams so after a lot of going back and forward in the end I decided to get some lavender sachets for my drawers back home. So strong was their smell that the whole car is now smelling of lavender!

Present day Napier is largely the result of a major earthquake that flattened the city in February 1931 (75 years ago on Friday). The city was completely rebuilt, adopting an Art Deco style. Walking around the main city centre you feel that you are transported to a different era. From shops to major banks so many beautiful buildings have been very carefully preserved making this a unique place to be.

Our first evening at Napier was a trip back to our teenage years! We had pizza and fizzy drinks by the sea front. But not just any pizza and any fizzy drink! We had "Hell’s Pizza" (apparently "the" pizza in New Zealand) and L&P, a Kiwi lemonade! Our evening of course could never be complete without some ice-cream so Blair managed to track down "Lick This!" the local ice cream shop right before they closed!