Napier, New Zealand – February 25

NZ loves tugs more than any other country it seems!

Overcast, 21 degrees

Today, we are back to the PM tours, so what to say about the morning…oh, I know…our toilets aren’t working…AGAIN! When some people had to wait in a very long line for tours in Fiji, we heard from management that that is not the ‘Regent standard’, ah…I don’t think this is the Regent standard…or

first of 2 vineyard visits

maybe it is?? Of course, if you think about it (I don’t recommend thinking about it for long) the only way you know the toilet isn’t working is to USE the toilet! I don’t know about your family, but MY family has a particular bathroom morning routine, different from other parts of the day…this coupled with the failing of the toilet system and it wasn’t pretty!

Well…what to do when you want to be out of the room without a toilet…go to the gym… while I was out, I was able to find a working toilet. An hour later, back at the room for breakfast blogging - still no toilet. Sooner or later I was going to have to take a shower. I had bolted to the

wine sampling

gym without washing my face or brushing my teeth…I know…gross, but you know what’s more ewww? I won’t even say. Finally, I had to

grapes

hold my breath and take a shower.

About a half an hour later (at least 2 hours after we realized the toilet was on the fritz) and just as I was about to venture out to use the facilities elsewhere, WOOSH! Never a

bird proofing the grapes

more delightful sound was heard! We danced a little jig! We tried the flush again…woosh!

I’d been looking forward to today’s tour since we booked it months ago.

welcome to Napier 

We were visiting a couple of New Zealand’s vineyards. I’ve been known to consume my fair share of New Zealand wine, so I was happy to be visiting the land from where these wines came.

I was a bit underwhelmed. The visits were OK, the

Mission winery

wines were good, but all in all, meh. Over our travels, we’ve visited many a winery and these unfortunately were a couple of the least impressive visits.

Along the way to and from the wineries we saw much of the landscape and heard more information about New Zealand – this was interesting. Our bus broke down along the way and had to wait for another smaller bus…not ideal,

logs waiting to head to China

but no big deal…not our first bus

art deco McDonald's

SNAFU, probably won’t be the last.
BTW, a major export of this area of New Zealand is raw logs, much of them to China. Because of the Corona virus situation, no logs are going…they are piling up.
A significant number of Napier’s downtown buildings was in the art deco style as are a few other

"the wheels on the bus..."

buildings in the outer areas. There is a McDonald’s in an art deco

huge, old dead tree made in to a carving

building!