Napier

Art Deco. Too be honest I don't really know what its all about, but Nay is a closet fan and so a walking tour of the Art Deco capital of the world was not to be sniffed at. Napier was demolished by a 7.8 magnitude earthquake back in 1931. At the time the townsfolk wanted to rebuild with a statement, and this was to be in the form of Art Deco architecture.

Below is a picture of the Port of Napier from Bluff Hill lookout. The next day a Princess Cruise ship pulled in and flooded the town with American and Australian tourists. It was weird watching the town
gear up for a big pay day. The Art Deco center brought in additional Flappers to try and manage the swarm (Flappers = lady's dressed in the fashion of the time, not mechanical devices to bat away overseas tourists.)   

 From here just a selection of pictures from our self guided walk around the town. There were 93 points of interest which we covered on our map, but sadly all that remains of most of the buildings are the top half's as the bottom sections have been rented out to evil modern looking shops with no intent on reflecting the towns theme in their hideous signage and logos. We thought this was pretty sad but we also guessed that whoever owns the buildings presumably rents out the bottom section to pay for maintenance and conservation of the upper sections. Another example of commercial "needs" stamping all over tradition and history as we saw in Wellington with the cemetery.

The two pictures below show a before and after comparison of Hastings Street following the devastation of the earthquake in "31. The first picture is from our map guide book. You can make out that the third building in on the left hand side survived totally in tact. Apparently this was because it had only just been build using floating foundations which the architect had just brought into practice at the time following a visit to San Fransisco.