Art Deco

My plan for today had been to find a wine tour.  Unfortunately, public holidays got in the way of that idea so on to plan B (because there is always a plan B).  Napier is also the Art Deco capital of the world. I know nothing about Art Deco.  Ergo, I should take the opportunity to learn.  Bingo, a 2 hour tour with the Art Deco Trust.  Perfect.

Actually, this tour was textbook training course style.  They sat us down in a room and told us what they were going to show us with a slide show.  Then they walked us around town and showed us the buildings.  And then they took us back to the room, provided tea and coffee, and showed a 30 minute video telling us everything they had just told us!  I seem to recall that format from my P&G training course days!

I was a little disorientated at the start, though.  When the tour guide stood up and, speaking in a broad Scouse accent, said that his name was John Williams and the other guide was called Sue, I thought I'd fallen into some sort of bizarre quasi-parallel universe.  But it turned out his name was Ron, not John, so that was OK.

Ask me a question about Art Deco, go on, I know it all now!  I can tell a ziggurat from a zigzag, a power line from a sunburst.  Actually, that's about all I know.  Although I can tell you why Napier is built almost entirely of buildings in the Art Deco style - the entire city was flattened in a huge earthquake and fire in 1931 so this is one of the only places in the world where the entire city centre was designed and built within a 2 year period, 1931 - 1933 being right in the middle of the Art Deco period.

On a side note, I jinxed the sunshine by buying a new pair of shorts, so the tour was in the rain and the photos aren't great.  But here's an example of a ziggurat and some eyebrows.

This building shows zigzags and sunbursts and probably some other elements as well.

And this statue is called "A Wave in Time" and depicts the daughter of one of the main architects involved in the rebuilding of Napier.  Of course, the Art Deco period was also the time when women became empowered and did things like learn to drive themselves around in their cars.  A detail for which I am very grateful, otherwise I'd be a bit stumped on this holiday!

Are you impressed by how cultured I am???  Don't worry - I'll have forgotten it all by tomorrow :-)

I've moved on to the north of Hawke Bay this evening, I'm currently camped at Gisborne in a large campsite on the sea front.  There doesn't seem to be a lot to do here, but to be fair, I only chose it because it provided a coastal route between Napier and Rotorua (that and the vain hope that there might be a Richard Armitage lookalike hanging around).  Moving on to Rotorua tomorrow for some hot springs therapy and maori culture before I go to Auckland.