tales from break part one (Napier)

First I'm going to apologize for the fact I have not updated this in a long while, but adventure calls and it allows for some better blogging so here we go.  I also need to mention that the amount of adventures are too many to list with pictures in one blog so I am going to do them in several installments as they are still happening.

From Rotorua to Napier
At first I didn't know how the trip would be as I really know my trip mates (two of the Americans in the same program as me), even though I had a class with them.    Despite the late start and horrible hang over of one of my trip mates the trip got off on a start and turned out too be a good amount of fun and adventure.  The first stop we made was the NZ city of Napier.  The city of Napier and area of Napier used to be primarily a marsh land and mostly unusable, but an earth quake made the land rise and the marsh turn fertile (go figure the country of NZ is on a fault line)  The city is a very interesting place in that most of it is decorated in eclectic art deco style.  The land around Napier is full of vineyards and home to some of the oldest in NZ, there are multiple cheese makers, and a full venue of gourmet food.  The problem arises when everything besides pubs and the most expensive restaurants close at 5pm, especially on the weekend.  So what else is there to do in a hipster city in NZ when every thing is closed go to the PUB!  Some of the cheapest food that can be had is pub food and that usually comes with a drink special!  Well we were fresh on our break and were catching up on every thing American we knew from home so naturally the night took to a lot of imbibing of alcoholic beverages.  This ended at a dance club where I kicked some major ass in a dance off (well this is what I was told in the morning after my headache had receded)! 
The morning was a bit rough to say the least but we got going and headed out to find a famous cheese factory!  The cheese wasn't the highlight at all of the day, some of it was good but most of it was awful, most of the goat cheese tasted like what a goat hind end smells like!  The wineries were absolutely beautiful, the one in the pictures is the oldest in NZ established in the early 1800s by the Catholic church for training priests and is still owned by the church.  The end of the day we toured Cape Kidnappers where the largest Ganet nesting site is in the world.  The evening was most laid back in comparison to the night previous, non of us or our livers had any desire to get crazy so we stayed in at the hostel and cooked our own food and went to bed early (well also there is less to do on a Sunday night that any other night).  From there we spent a lazy morning packing up eating the free breakfast provided by the hostel and planned our next part of adventure to Gisborne....    TO BE CONTINUED...

Fountain at night in Napier

Art deco styled hostel we stayed in

 

 

the sign says it all!

Wine tasting

Cape Kidnappers

okay...maybe a bit over tipsy at this point and some random guy from Texas on the far right