Hearts and Flowers in Napier

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2/14/2010
Hearts and Flowers in Napier
Today we’re in Napier New Zealand. When we first booked our shore excursions last Oct they didn’t have any listed for Napier yet and by the time they did we decided we might like a day without one since there were 6 New Zealand Port days in a row. So we slept in a bit and then headed up to breakfast and to do our daily puzzles. When we returned to the room I found a surprise of a dozen roses waiting for me from John for Valentine’s Day. This was in addition to the lovely heart necklace he’d already given me when we had our Valentines Dinner in the Pinnacle.

We then took the shuttle into town and did a bit of shopping at the Opossum Store which had some interesting items. We also stopped at a local café for coke (the real stuff) and a very good brownie. Napier had a major earthquake (7.8) back in the early 1930’s so rebuilt everything in an Art Deco style. John got a few pictures of the buildings but I hadn’t brought my camera. We then took the shuttle back to the ship and the driver pointed out some buildings etc along the way.

We had lunch then headed up to Trivia in the lounge. We teamed up with the women from the previous day and another of her relatives and that was the trick since we won with 15/17 points. So we now have Dam Ships hats to bring home. We didn’t fare so well at Bingo thought I thought I might win when I just needed a B14 on Valentine’s day to win but they didn’t call that one until the first of the next game. It was Family Bingo so you got an extra card if you brought a photo of a family member. John had a picture of his mother and dog on his iphone so used that. I brought my laptop and showed a picture from my mother’s 80th birthday. They said using my laptop was the most creative they’d seen to bring a picture. Too bad it didn’t help us win. The ship was scheduled to sail during Bingo and they were paging one woman several times. From something one of the crew said it appears this same woman hadn’t made it back to the ship on time at one other port. The captain then came on for his daily speech and seemed a bit upset letting everyone know they needed to be back on time at the next port. We heard later they did have to put the gangway back out for this woman to board.


It was then time for dinner where we joined another couple from Canada and two sisters from San Diego. We both had the Surf and Turf so John got extra Surf since I don’t eat lobster. For dessert I got the Chef Rudy special white chocolate hat filled with mousse and he got the crème brule so we shared them and both were very good. We decided to skip the show (another cast show) and headed to the casino where John did pretty well at the Blackjack table but I didn’t do well at all on the slot machines.

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