Napier Trip

Just back from a few crisp days in Napier, in fact the first few days were more than crisp I discovered while trying to sketch the old Hotel Central on Emerson Street (right and window detail below). The southerly was screaming through and my soft Aucklander fingers weren't coping so well.

Recovery from the cold came thanks to the excellent Mister D's further along Tennyson Street for coffee and doughnuts. These doughnuts, which incidentally, don't quite look like a kumara as in my sketch above, and come with a choice of hyperdermics - very strange - but once my quince jelly was injected into the doughnut it was great.

One of Napier's most underrated attractions would have to be the Faraday Centre (above and right), a science and technology museum that is totally hands-on. The kids had a ball working the old phone exchange, typing out morse code, playing the Pianola, sitting in the 1903 Rover, trying the railway jigger, learning about hot type printing, spooked out by the iron lung, etc. They also got totally terrified by the Tesla Coil in action (me too - it's bloody loud).

It was the Winter Art Deco weekend too, so I got into the spirit capturing some of the architectural details including the kowhaiwhai influenced friezes on the ASB building above. A couple and some store mannequins with in 30's costume, two '32 fords in front of the T&G Building on Marine Parade.

Vessels on the dry at Ahuriri, sketched just on sunset and Westshore sketches at bottom...