Napier - Art Deco city

Napier is a city that was destroyed by earthquake in 1931 and then completely rebuilt with concrete Art Deco style buildings. The other thing I found remarkable about the city is that they buried all their service ducts like electricity and telephone and said that they would have their sinage and lighting on columns in the centre of the street rather than on poles on the footpath. The whole city has a very clean and well looked after appearance and the buildings are just a delight. Everything is so well looked after and the locals really seem to love their town. We are staying at the apARTments in the centre of town and from here it is possible to look out of our balcony onto the mall (it feels very like being in the Richardsons Arcade in Armidale). We had a breakfast at Heath and Saphos, lunch at the McDecco McDonalds and dinner at Provedore. All the food so far has been considerably less fussy than I remember when we had our trip to South Island which may mean that there are two distinct styles of cuisine in NZ. Hopefully when we come back next time the broadband situation will be resolved as paying $10/hr for telecom wireless is not an option and dialup is no longer an option in the civilised universe.