February 4, 2012

New Zealand Cruise . Day 7 . Napier


If the people who made Willy Wonka ever made a town, it would have been Napier.  What a goofy place.  The theme of this town is Art Deco, so people were dressed in 1920's era garb, driving old cars, and dancing to long forgotten music.  Cool enough, but a little bizarre.  The town itself was gorgeous with lots of flowers and a never ending beachfront.  

The plan for the day called for renting bikes from a place called Fishbike.  They were shocked at the sheer volume of Wilhelms renting bicycles so they gave us a nice discount and pointed us off into the distance and we rode off to explore this sea side town.  The ride was gorgeous along the ocean even though it was a bit overcast.  About 6 miles into the trip Sara, looking for an excuse as to why she was so slow, decided to get ill along the roadside.  Somehow, she was able to bike all the way back to the start where she promptly fell asleep on a bench trying to feel better.  We thought about putting newspapers on her and leaving her there, but finally decided against it.  The poor girl got sick two more times so we decided to head back to the ship. 


While Sara was recovering, I took the kids to eat lunch and then took them to Adventure Ocean.  After some convincing, Sara got out of bed to make the most of the day and headed back into town with me.  After drinking a smoothie Sara started to perk up a bit so we decided to go on a bike tour where we sat in the back and someone peddled.  Soon after we started, it became clear that the lady guiding us around was both drunk and high.  It was funny (and scary).  She biked us in the gardens, through a wedding (I thought the groom was going to shoot us because she got stuck right in the front of the ceremony and had to turn the bike around), then she hit a tree, hit a pedestrian (who used a lot of flavorful language), then took us into head on traffic, down the same street about 4 times asking us if we had already been there.  She was very insistent that we check out the jail at some point.  After 30 minutes of near death encounters, we just had her drop us off on the beach somewhere and decided to walk back.  It was a nice walk and certainly much safer than the mystery bicycle ride.

w r i t t e n  b y  m i k e
















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