Napier

The port at Napier is rather congested so it's necessary to take a shuttle bus into town (just a few minutes drive).    The cruise operators are certainly familiar with herding about 2000 people around, and the arrangements were smooth and hassle free.     There was a 15-20 minute wait to get off the ship, but everyone was given a number and it went well.

As already mentioned napier is famous for its are deco buildings, but I was interested to see that there aren't preserved as if in a museum:   they're living, operating buildings, with busy shops and the like occupying them.

It's quite cool but not unbearable.   Good weather for coffee!   And the free wi fi functions well.

Update: At first I thought Napier was quite vibrant – and so it was - but our initial impressions were of it at lunch time on a Saturday just after the arrival of a cruise ship (at noon). By 4 pm, things were a bit different! The misty rain had endured, the shops had mostly closed and so the crowds had gone, I'd walked around some of the secondary shopping streets and had been overwhelmed by the number of vacant shops with “To Lease” signs and several of the accommodation places on the sea frontage with “no vacancy” signs had no cars (apparently they were closed). Still, the architecture remains in our mind.