The race for the South Island is on. We finally pull ourselves away from the thermal bath zone and speed towards Napier, a town famed for its art deco architecture. It’s got a very southern California look with low buildings, 1930’s style buildings and vintage art on all the interiors.
NapierDeco.gif
But Art Deco Napier quickly becomes Disappointment Central. First of all it’s Friday, so all the shops are closed by 4pm. We find one of the few open bars and stop for dirty martinis, which is the natural desire when one finds oneself walking through an art deco city. The bartender says she’ll have to check the recipe book. Angela was helpful enough to inform her that it’s just a martini with olive juice. The bartender then asks the other bartender if they have olive juice. Angela quickly smells what’s cooking here and instead asks for the menu of house drink specialties. She orders the mojito. I, on the other hand, have gin on my mind and stick to the martini order. The drinks arrive. Where shall I begin? The martini: The gin never really tastes like gin, instead giving off an odd moonshine flavour. The only good thing I can say about it is that the olives were big enough to take the place of what could have been more gin. The mojito: Served in a pint glass. While ordinarily not a bad thing, here it gave them reason to use what we suspect to be lemon-flavored soda water. The mint leaves were few, far between, and more of a garnish than a central ingredient. I also think there’s supposed to be sugar in it, but I guess they felt the Schwepps had enough of that. The resulting taste is best described as dirty seltzer water. Not quite worth the $12NZ each. We drank them anyway, but that’s beside the point.
With all these weird New Zealand things wearing on us, we needed a jolt of the familiar: Kentucky Fried Chicken. I’ll spare you the descriptive write-up. Just know that Angela found what she thinks was a bone in her coleslaw.