We flew out of Reagan airport and took the metro in to avoid paying for airport parking. It was clutch and we'll definitely do that again in the future! Kenny was changing his shoelaces during the commute.
The sunrise was beautiful from our gate!
Kenny had a nourishing breakfast of Five Guys at 6:30am. 😂
We flew into Fort Myers, picked up our rental car, and headed straight to the beach! I had to start shelling immediately!
I love all of the tropical foliage in Florida. 😍
We walked the beach for a while, then walked around the Margaritaville resort!
We grabbed a late lunch at The Whale. I got a Hugo spritz and the roasted beet salad with fish. The fish was bland but the salad itself was delicious!
We got to our hotel for check-in to find that we were the guests of the day! 😂 The receptionist told us they choose a random guest each day - it was such a fun surprise!
We loved our hotel - we had a king suite and it was spacious and comfortable. I liked that the bedroom was separate from the living area where the door was, so we didn't get any noise from the hallway in bed. They upgraded us from a pool view room which we had originally selected, but after checking out both rooms we opted for the non-pool view room because the noise from the pool was hard to ignore.
We rested in the hotel after an early wake up call, and then headed to The Capital Grille for dinner. They were having their seasonal wine and wagyu event which consists of $35 burger and wine pairings. Sydney Carver raves about this event, so I was excited to try it! I thought the food was good but not the best in the world, I would've liked some lettuce and tomato on the burger but Kenny said the burger itself was the highest quality one he'd ever had. It was yummy and a good value, and the service was excellent! Plus I got two glasses of wine since Kenny doesn't drink. 😎
The next morning, we slept in and then Kenny hit the pool while I got ready. The pool had a chickee bar and kept the sodas flowing for Kenny.
Early that afternoon, we headed down to 5th Ave to window shop and walk the beach. There were a couple of open houses happening at homes for sale and I wanted to go snoop around, but refrained since we couldn't even pretend to be in the market for any of them. 😂
One of the best decisions we made for this trip was to not over-plan our days. We had a few things planned, but for the most part we just felt out the vibe each day and decided what to do hour by hour. It was more relaxing and I think we had a better time having less planned, but we still had full days each day!
We stopped by several restaurants to check out their happy hour offerings before finally landing at BiCE - and thank goodness we did! BiCE was my favorite restaurant we visited the whole trip. We've been to the one in Palm Beach but we preferred this one. Their happy hour menu is 50% off and it is extensive - it has a good selection of entrees, not just bites. The service was absolutely excellent!
I got a lychee martini and the 1926 spritzer. Both were good, but the spritzer was particularly good!
They had AMAZING bread that was served with butter with a drizzle of truffle oil. We got calamari which was okay but not my favorite. Kenny and I both got Ceasar salads which were perfect - he got grilled chicken with his and I wished I had done that because it was so good!
They had an excellent guitarist playing and singing covers, it felt like we had our own personal Santana. A storm blew through while we were there, and we were more than happy to hang out until it passed!
We hung out at the pool before freshening up for dinner. 😎
Before dinner, we took a detour to the Horizon Way beach access for sunset. It became our go-to sunset spot for the rest of the week!
Always on the hunt for shells. 😂
Gulf sunsets are so special! This was my first time on the Gulf side of Florida. The only other sunset over the water like this that I've seen has been at Cape Charles.
We got dinner at Bayside Grill on the water. Kenny and I both got grilled mahi with lemon beurre blanc and it was delicious! One thing I will say about the Naples area is that most places wind down early - we got dinners around 7:30-8:00 every night and we were often one of the only parties there.
Our server was great - he treated us to a piece of cake because we told him we were in town celebrating Kenny's birthday and our anniversary!
One of my main objectives for this trip was to find seashells. Kenny arranged this little spread of the ones I had found so far. 😎
The next day, Kenny arranged an Everglades airboat tour at Wooten's!
We followed in The Rock's footsteps. 😂
While we waited for our tour, we watched an alligator show that had me CRINGING!! The guide, Jeffery, is very familiar with the gators that live at Wooten's and he taught us a lot about them while putting his extremities at risk for our entertainment. He said he's been bitten by a gator on three occasions, and I did not want to witness the fourth! He was awesome - knowledgeable and so entertaining, a bona fide Florida man. 😂
The airboat tour was beautiful and so much fun! I was fascinated to learn from our guide, Clay, about the mangroves - they've only been growing in this area since the 50's, it used to be all grasses. We saw a few different alligators on the tour too - Clay knows where most of them hang out as they're very territorial. He also dispelled a lot of rumors about gators for us - they actually have very low stamina and are usually very afraid of humans and will only attack you if provoked or if they're very hungry. He also taught us that while they have incredible bite strength, you can easily hold their jaws shut if you happen to have a run-in with a gator.
Clay also told us that he and his friends all own airboats and drive them out to uninhabited islands on the weekends to hang out. I am so jealous of everyone living the coastal lifestyle, I can so see myself living somewhere along the coast of South Carolina, Georgia, or Florida one day!
I love seeing all the lizards in Florida - it's much rarer to see a little guy like this in Virginia!
Wooten's is a zoo of sorts and has lots of reptiles to see, but they also have two tigers! I'm not sure how they ended up there, but they're beautiful.
Before we left, Kenny got his hands on a baby gator! Say hello to Jellybean. 😂
We drove around to a couple of different Everglades National Park visitor centers as we made our way back to Naples, and we drove through Everglades City. Believe it or not, Kenny wrangled bigfoot right in the middle of a parking lot! We let him go, though.
After a day in the 'glades we got cleaned up for dinner - there is nothing better than a hotel-getting-ready-glass-of-prosecco.
We headed back to our new go-to beach access for sunset!
Kenny couldn't resist a sunset dip, hence our vastly different outfits - who could blame him??
Can you believe this color saturation?? My friend has been visiting Naples over New Years for the past few years and she told me that they have the best sunsets she's sever seen. Unreal... I will remember this night forever. Red sky at night, sailor's delight...
For dinner, we had both Culver's and Wingstop. We'd never had either before and I've been dying to try Wingstop ranch in particular! I have high standards for ranch and it met them. We ate dinner in bed - one of my favorite guilty pleasures is eating takeout or leftovers in a hotel bed and watching TV. 😂
The next day was our seventh wedding anniversary! First, we visited the Naples Botanical Garden. We tried to get there early to beat the heat, but it didn't help much! There was a tour starting right after we got there so we joined it and ended up being the only two people. 😂 It was really fun though, our guide took us around to teach us about all of the edible plants in the gardens.
We saw a rainbow eucalyptus which was so cool! I remember photos of these trees going around on Tumblr back in the day.
There were so many beautiful plants, I loved the blooming lillies!
On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at Kelly's Shell Shack - I knew from the outside it would be cool! They had thousands of interesting shells for sale, it's almost like a museum in there. We talked to the sales associate about local shelling and she said it's changed so much in recent years - apparently certain tour groups are wiping out shell populations by encouraging live shelling which is supposed to be restricted.
We went back to the hotel, spent some time at the pool, and then got freshened up for the evening!
We headed to Naples City Dock for a sunset sail with Sweet Liberty!
Whenever we're on a trip near the water, I always book a sunset sail! They never get old, especially when you can bring your own snacks and drinks!
We had a beautiful sunset and enjoyed talking to the first mate, he's spent a good amount of time in Virginia so we enjoyed connecting on that.
After sunset, we had some time before our dinner reservation, so we grabbed drinks at The Dock. It was SUCH a vibe in there, and Kenny and I enjoyed a Shirley Temple and a passionfruit cosmo, respectively. He drank a lot of Shirley Temples at the pool bars on our honeymoon, so it felt nostalgic to have one on our anniversary. 😂
We had dinner reservations at USS Nemo. They're known for their miso broiled sea bass so I had to try it! The food was yummy but it wasn't very vibey in there because it was a Monday and we had the last reservation of the night so we were the only table there for most of the time. 😂 I'd like to go back when it's more lively.
We had Publix cake for dessert in bed, how very Florida!
The next day Kenny drove us down to Marco Island for a beach day! I wanted to do more shelling and I figured we couldn't go wrong there.
The only thing better than pickles in general is pickles at the beach.
I've never seen such piles of shells!
We found great shells, Kenny actually found the best ones! I was hoping to find some seaglass too, but the only pieces I found weren't ready yet so I tossed them back.
Before we left, we got a late lunch at Sunset Grille on the beach.
They let me take my Mai Tai to go!
.JPG)
More lizards!
Before we went back to the hotel, we stopped at Tigertail Beach which is also on Marco Island. It's unique becuase from the parking area, you have a LONG walk over a vast beach to get to the water! I tried to capture how long the beach was but it's impossible - I felt like I was in Dune. 😂
We spotted these freaky bugs - it's hard to tell in the picture, but there were two riding piggyback. We identified them as southern striped walkingsticks, apparently the male rides on the female to guard her. They can shoot a defensive fluid up to 16 inches, so thankfully that did not happen! I did NOT like seeing bugs like this right on the beach. 😂
We also saw this freaky sea pork in a few places - YUCK. 😂
I found this beautiful shell right at my feet as the tide was going out! I was shocked that it was unoccupied.
This is a lagoon that you have to walk around to get to Tigertail Beach. Aparently some people choose to trudge through it instead of going around.
We went back to the hotel and got showered as fast as we could in order to catch sunset at our favorite beach access before dinner.
For dinner, we headed back to The Dock since we'd had such a great time there the night before! I think it was my favorite dinner of the whole trip - our server was a trip and the food was delicious! We got the cheddar biscuits and I got the Key lime grouper, everything was delicious.
After dinner, I sat by the fire pit out by the pool while Kenny took a late night dip.
The next day was our last full day of the trip, and Kenny's birthday! We had a rough start to the day, it was stormy and Kenny had wanted to kayak. We tried to anyway, but all of the spots we tried that claimed to have rentals no longer offered them. We ended up at Clam Pass Park and walked walked down the 3/4 mile boardwalk to the beach once the rain let up. We spent some time on the beach, but it started to rain again, and by the time we got back to the boardwalk to walk back it was pouring harder than ever. There's a restaurant called Rhode's End at the end of the boardwalk I was able to duck into, but they were closed that day for maintenance so no one was there! I say I was able to duck in, because Kenny had left some of his stuff in a chickee hut down on the beach and the rain got back so fast that he was stuck down there while I was at the restaurant bar. 😂 It poured for SO long, the better part of an hour, and I didn't have my phone or anything so I was just sitting there twiddling my thumbs! It would've been way better had the restaurant been open. Once the rain finally started to let up, we took the long walk back down the boardwalk to the car and headed back to the hotel to dry off and regroup.
After the rain put a damper on our morning, there was only one way to get the vibe right... Back to BiCE for happy hour! The bread is ridiculously good.
The service at BiCE can't be beat - we ended up with the same server we had had the other day and she remembered us as well as our drink orders! I got a chicken Ceasar salad again and it was incredible. They also had the same musician playing, and we thoroughly enjoyed hearing him again! I wish I knew his name!
Ever since we started eating meat again, Kenny has been on a journey to find his favorite steak, so we ended up back at The Capital Grille for his birthday dinner. We looked into bunches of steakhouses in Naples but he decided on Capital Grille! They went all out because I told them it was Kenny's birthday, and guess my OpenTable app had our anniversary saved too because they had decorations on our table for both occasions, plus they brought us a toast!
Kenny got a porterhouse steak and thoroughly enjoyed it. I got the sea bass and it was delicious!
We ended dinner with these cute festive desserts!
We got back to Virginia fairly early the next day so it felt like a bonus vacation day. We stopped in Front Royal on our way home at On Cue Sports Bar because they had great reviews for wings, and Kenny has also been on a wing journey at the same time as his steak journey. It was SO good, we'll definitely be back! I got a delicious quesadilla, and their fries and ranch were 10/10. Downtown Front Royal was so cute, I had no idea!
We got home to an apple cake that my mom had made and a birthday gift for Kenny! My parents always make birthdays special.
Roxy was SO happy to have us back! She sleeps with me every night in bed but rarely gets in my lap during the day. I worked from home the next day and she snuggled right up, I know she misses us terribly when we're gone!
xoxx, Laura
No comments