Florida Vacation - Naples, FL

Our home base for our vacation was in Naples Florida, at a country club condominium about 25 minutes inland from the Naples beaches.  Our flight arrived in the early evening so by the time we got our luggage, or rental car, and made the drive from Fort Myers to Naples we decided to do nothing more than grab something to eat and hit the grocery store.  We had every intention of cooking as many of our meals as possible, and spent at nearly $300 on groceries for the week, although that also included many 6 packs of beer and at least one bottle of wine.  Considering that we would spend an average of $50 per meal if we ate out, we decided that $300 was a way better.

The next day - our first full day - it was raining, but that didn't stop up from visiting the small "local"pool that was just down the street from our condo. 

 
DH attempted to do 60 laps of the tiny pool and around lap 55 he stopped because it started thundering and because he was ready to throw up from exhaustion.  I did 12 laps and felt like I got a good workout from it, so even though he was disappointed in coming in a little short of his goal, 55 laps is definitely no joke. 

We spent most of the afternoon just relaxing and getting into the spirit of vacation.  DH started reading his first recreational book in years, and I paged through the southwest Florida section of the Fodor's travel guide that I checked out of the library (which ended up being an amazing resource that we used to plan nearly every outing, in addition to what I had already researched on Trip Advisor.)

In the evening, even though it was still cloudy, we decided to venture to this ocean.   This is when we started to realize that inland was always dark and gloomy, and it was often raining.  But as you drove near the ocean the clouds thinned, the blue sky appeared, and it was usually sunny and beautiful.  It was crazy, and consistently beautiful on the beach and gloomy inland where our condo was.  We started calling the condo area Gloomsville. 

The first beach we visited was Lowdermilk Beach.  Although this picture doesn't really show it, this was a beach that was lined with lots of hotels and beach houses.  It was very populated but very beautiful in the evening.  In fact, it ended up being the most populated beach we visited during our time there, but since we were just there for a walk, it didn't matter anyway.

We saw some very ugly ducks in the park area of the beach, as well as their ugly ducklings.

After the beach, we strolled around the Naples upscale shopping areas, peering into restaurants and shops.  We stopped to get ice cream at one point but when I saw the prices - $7.50 for a small milkshake! - we decided to stop at the store on our way home and buy a carton of ice cream.  That decision served us well for the rest of the week....