Day 4 - Noumea

Today we docked at Noumea at 8am.  The 3 of us, as well as The Lanes and Quayle Snrs had pre-purchased tickets for the 'tchou tchou train', one of those sight-seeing trains.  We had been on one in Athens and quite enjoyed it, so we thought it would be a good option, especially for Cooper.  We were right. He loved it! 

 

We toured all through Noumea, and up to two different lookouts.  At one of the lookouts, we had apple cider and French pastries.  Of course, Coop and I didn't have any cider.  We stuck to water and lemonade. :)

I was surprised to learn that nickel mining drives the economy, and equally surprised that it wasn't a more 'developed' city.  It was quite dirty and not overly 'corporate' for a capital city of a country.  There were some amazing beaches, though. I would have liked to have visited the beach but we have two beach days planned for the other ports to decided to do the one thing I had always planned for Noumea: French pastry!! We found a patisserie and with woeful French (we wished Tris was there) and some help from a lovely bilingual fellow customer, we ordered a selection of delicious treats.  The eftpos machine was not working and I had not changed any $AU into Pacific Francs, as I was just going to use my credit card.  We had to leave the pastries there (sob!) while we walked back down Coconut Square to exchange some money.  Cooper was in the ergo and very quickly fell fast asleep, but only after asking one more time for his special cup cake. :)

We finally returned and got our pastries and enjoyed them sitting on a bench in Coconut a Square before heading back to the shuttle buses and back to the ship.  The Quayles Snr and Lanes had explored on their one after the train adventure, including continuing the cruise dare fest by daring Laney to get a tattoo (he didn't!).  The Pyes and Lissy had had a grand old time at Lemon Bay, and had crepes for lunch. They benefited from Tris' ability to speak French, and he even made Em remember her French lessons by making her order lunch.  
We (Quayles Jnr) had a 3 hour afternoon nap! It was so good! :) 
We had an enjoyable dinner all together before heading to the centrum for another round of the 'finish the lyrics' game show.  Cooper enjoyed dancing to all the music.  We thought he would enjoy a show in the theatre so we took him to one at 9pm.  He absolutely LOVED it and sat through the whole thing, clapping (sometimes singing) and cheered loudly at the end.  A lovely end to a fun day!