Naples is the new Cape Cod

Though we'll always love the Cape and nothing can replace it, after a super nice Girls Weekend in Florida we just might have to make Naples an annual thing, like Kate visiting the Cape used to be.

We had perfect weather pretty much the whole time we were there, besides the 10 minute downpour that hit as we were sippin sangria on the beach, with temps in the high 80s/low 90s. The beach is about a 4 minute walk across the street from the condo, so we spent every day at the beach relaxing, swimming, dolphin-watching, taking walks to the beach bar, and getting tans.

I have to share and explain this picture I took at the beach, because it is too wild not to. Dolphins would regularly swim up close to the shore and so it was fun to watch them and try to take pictures of them. One time Kate was in the water while dolphins were swimming by so I had my camera out taking pictures of her with the dolphin fins in the background. Then there was a big splash and I took a picture of what I at first thought was a dolphin's tail splashing the water. But then someone else on the beach yelled sting ray, and I realized it was a sting ray flying out of the water right near the dolphins! We had seen sting rays swimming up and down the shore in the shallow water all week, so it wasn't shocking that there was a sting ray out there, just crazy that it flew out of the water like that and I happened to get a picture of it.


In the evenings we would go to 5th Avenue (Naple's mainstreet), 3rd Street (Naple's old/historic downtown- picture at top of the 3 of us was taken there at the Old Naples Pub), Tin City (small shops and places to eat near the water), or Venitian Village (outdoor mall/some restaurants- picture above of me and Mom was taken when we went out to dinner there at an Italian restaurant on the water). My mom treated us to nice dinners each night which was really sweet of her, and much appreciated.

One of the more memorable nights from the trip was when we went to McCabe's Irish Pub on 5th Avenue. We were just looking for a place to have a drink after dinner, but once we went inside and saw the guy playing singing/playing guitar and taking requests we ended up staying until it closed. The guy was a little crazy, but he pretty much played everything we requested and we had fun singing/dancing along. And Kate and I ordered mai tais since she had never had one before, and it definitely reminded me of happy hour in Maui since I hadn't had one since the honeymoon. Overall a wonderful vacation that we will have to do again sometime!