Small World, Big Ship

On my way into Stornoway today I saw the towering presence of MS Queen Victoria.

The last time I saw her was in Sydney. The first time I saw her was in Napier on the 1 March 2008. 

Launched in 2007 she is a fairly impressive 294 metres long although the current largest cruise ship, Symphony of The Seas is 361 metres. 

It made me realise, yet again, just how small a world we live in. I've tried to find out how many nautical miles she must have travelled in her life so far but I've not been successful. Nevertheless it is a slightly strange feeling to have seen this ship as far away from my present home as she could have been.

Coincidentally on this day 10 years ago I also posted about a cruise ship far from home here.

Sculptures in Emerson Street

In March 2010 a scuptress made an art deco figurine of a lady with a dog and it's home is in the semi-pedestrianised art deco building adorned Emerson Street in Napier, New Zealand. At the time I blogged about it on my other blog. When I returned this year I discovered an addition: a youngster waving to her from one of the canopy supports. 

By the way I don't think that the chap second from the left in the top picture is Jeremy Corbyn.

An Unusual Museum

Most museums are devoted to informing people of things to be remembered or conserved. Opossum World in Napier is probably the only Museum in the world currently devoted to the extermination of a living creature: in this case the Opossum.

Its slogan is: Save a New Zealand tree. Buy Opossum fur products.

The imported Australian Opossum which was estimated (in 2008 when I last posted on the subject) to number 70 million in New Zealand eats an estimated 21 tonnes of foliage (mainly the young branch shoots of trees) each night - New Zealand's ecological nightmare.

The Soapbox Derby

The days of the soapbox as a vehicle for racing are long gone (except for a few diehards) but the name lives on and the Art Deco Weekend Soapbox Derby is one of the most popular events. It took place just after miday on the sweltering sundrenched Saturday morning with a huge crowd lining Napier's Tennyson Street.

There were numerous categories and entries including a 4-7 age group. Given that these machines travel quite quickly and are often hard to steer it must be quite an adventure for a 4 year old.

There were many machines and these are some of them:

Tnen they raced:

There were so many categories and prizes and I have no idea who won in which categories and a trawl of the various articles on the internet have been of little help but, hey, who cares? For the spectators it was just a case of watching the fun.

Napier Café Culture

I'm told that 20 years or so go there was very little in the way of coffee café culture in Napier. Now it's a huge industry. I was sure that I'd blogged about this on my other blog but I can't find any real reference to it. Anyway this is a very small selection of some of the ways to spend time having a coffee or meeting friends in the city. One of the things I've always found curious is that many cafés are open very early (one opens at 4.30 am and many at 6.30 am) but almost all (Starbucks excepted) are closed between 3 and 4pm.

The first two shots are of a café  named Ujazi. I was the first place I had a cofee in Napier in 2005. Wendy said "I'll meet you in Ujazi" and that became a meeting place for a long time.  

I should add that some of the café  pictures like that of Café Devine were taken pretty early on before things had got going last Saturday. There wasn't a vacant seat in the place for most of the rest of last weekend.

 

And two Taradale cafés: the first being the one that opens at 4.30am.

And then to Ahuriri:

This was where I used to go in my early days here when it was Café Ahuriri run by Cheryl about whom I blogged a week or so ago.

Art Deco Napier

I was up at 0630 last Saturday morning by which time Wendy and Martin had long gone to the gym.  It was a glorious morning so at just after 7am I decided to go and photograph the centre of Napier again before the Art Deco Weekend hordes descended for the Vintage Car Parade and the many other attractions of the day. Between that time and arriving back home at about 2.30pm I managed to take over 600 photos so I shall have no excuse for not blogging over the next few weeks although some of you may get rather bored with photos of vintage cars.

Firstly, however, I shall regale you with some photos which show why Napier is such an important Art Deco icon.