Midsemester Break II: Napier!

Destination #2, Napier! After dragging our sleepy selves to the bus, we made our way towards Napier!

This actually involved passing through Palmerston North again, so we got to wave hello to home, and take pictures of lots of nice views.

Mauren and I scored i-max seats again, heck yes!

Pretty views.

Hills near Palmy.

(:

Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

Four hours later, we arrived in Napier!

I see the sea!

We checked into our hostel – the Stables Lodge – which was much smaller and homelier than our previous ones (we chose it because they advertised having fresh organic herbs and CATS! :D). Everything was horse themed, and adorably decorated.

Map of the city!

And a neat hand-tree of past guests.

Ze kitchen.

We got settled in… and played with cats!

Now that's one happy kitten.

Then we headed on down to the beach!

We all took pictures of this random person. Hahahaha.

The water was beautiful, and… we took lots of pictures (and enjoyed the feeling of sand between our toes, of course)!

Flower growing among the rocks.

Sticks and stones.

Neat driftwood.

Sand and sea!

Lovely.

 Unfortunately the weather was a bit on the chilly side for swimming. Never too cold for Wisco, though!

Splashin' around.

Haha, what a goofball.

Refreshing!

Mauren collected a whole bunch of neat trinkets on the beach, including a pair of large rusty scissors covered in pebbles. Oooooooh.

Neato.

On our way back to the hostel, we passed the National Aquarium! It seemed kind of small (and we were on the cold and soggy side), so we opted to head back to the hostel and regroup.

After drying off and having a snack, we headed into town for some more exploring! We were presently surprised to find… the trees in the square all had knitted and crocheted cozies!

Funky critters.

Bright colors.

Crazy things!

Some were goofier than others. (:

I get the feeling it's watching me.... hmmm...

I can relate to this one.

We wandered on into a little park with a very big Morton Bay Fig tree!

Whatatree.

Then we wandered some more, and headed back to the hostel for dinner. YEAH PASTA! Woohoo! We also had an improvised apple-pear crumble for dessert, mmm. 

After dinner... we had game night! We were going to attempt to play a board game... but we didn't. Instead, we played this super fun silly sentence drawing game I taught the crew! Many many laughs were had. (:

After dinner was all cleaned up, we headed back out on the town to wander around and find a beer.

Burrrrr.

OR A BURR?

Haha, nevermind.

We called it an early night because we had another early bus to catch in the morning, headed to… Taupo!

But not before silliness ensued. Cool poses, guys.

Napier was lovely, but unfortunately we didn’t have much time there… definitely planning on coming back for a weekend... when it’s warmer! (:
That’s all for now!

Ariel

Up next: Taupo