Day 17 - Clearwater, FL to Naples, FL

Wow, Naples is not what I expected.  I'm not sure why I knew so little about this place before arriving.

We departed Grandma's this morning, but not before getting our free "hotel" breakfast.

Bacon, eggs, and honey butter ciabatta bread!

Now we're moving on up in the world!

We drove straight through from Tampa to Naples.  It was a pretty quick drive down I-75.

Not the best picture of Tampa Bay, but it's all I have.

We ate at a great little place called The Local.  I was surprised to see a local farm-to-table restaurant here, although in hindsight I shouldn't have been.  The pictures are on Erin's phone, but you can look it up online.  Great service and very good food.

We then checked in to the Gulfcoast Inn, which had mediocre reviews online.  This was one of the two cities I had a ton of trouble finding a hotel in.  I just thought it didn't have a lot of hotels, but I was way off.  We were apparently upgraded to the "Tuscan Villa" room and it seems nice enough.  We haven't experienced any of the horror stories from other reviewers so far.

I went to get a haircut while Erin took a nap.  Vinnie from Vinnie's Barber Shop down the street did a quick job for me.  It wasn't the best experience, but it was close and I can't complain.

Finally it was time to see Naples and figure out what was special about this place.

Downtown street.

One of many, many fountains.

One of many, many statues.

A park.

We walked a few streets and saw art galleries, high-end restaurants, and apparel stores.  Then we moved to another area and thought we had somehow ended up in Beverly Hills.

An alley.

Nice palms here too.

Looking down the street.

I can buy a yacht here?

After seeing all this fancy retail, we went to look at a few homes.

It turns out they are all mansions.

A typical home.

Next we headed out to the beach.

Naples pier.

A huge bird on the pier roof.

Erin and the Gulf.

Fishing is very popular out here.

See the bloody fish head on the right?

This man was asleep next to our car.  Odd.

So we discovered Naples was incredibly nice.  In fact, we didn't see a single run-down building anywhere.  It was odd.  Finally, I decided to research Naples and found it has the 2nd highest number of millionaires per capita in the US!  Some of the houses sell for more than $40 million!  6th highest average income in the US.  That explains a lot, including the movie theater we found.

Silverspot is located in a really nice nixed-use development, Mercado.

It reminds me of Southlake Town Square with palm trees.

The theater serves gourmet desserts!  (and gourmet meals too.)

Reserved leather chairs as seats!

It was expensive at $16 for a ticket, but the theater was incredibly nice.  This might be too much information, but the bathrooms were luxurious with frosted glass, tiles, and some sort of urinal invention called a splash guard.  I guess every little touch matters to their clientele.  We also noticed that everyone was dressed up for the movies.  That's a little different than back home.

We normally wouldn't see a movie on vacation since we can do that anywhere, but this was a pretty special theater and our car thermometer was showing 100 degrees.  I wanted to go to the swamp to see alligators but it was sweltering outside.  Not fun at all.

Naples, like Mobile, was a huge surprise.  I'm sure Floridians know all about it, but it never seems to make the news elsewhere.  I've never seen such perfect citywide landscaping in all my life!