Summer in Naples

Last year we visited Naples in mid-June and it was so quiet and wonderful that we decided we'd visit during the summer again. This year we visited at the end of July through early August and the weather was not as stellar. Boo! The city was a ghost town still, though, so that was awesome. The traffic decreases by about 95% in the summer which makes getting to the beach a super quick trip!

We took a Friday night flight on Allegiant (gag me) to Punta Gorda and drove the hour to Naples in our horrible little Mitsubishi rental car. We did a package deal from Allegiant to get airfare for the both of us plus a rental car for 5 days for like $400. You get what you pay for when sometimes. Oh well. We don't drive much once we're in Naples. Our flight was a bit delayed on Friday night (shocking since Allegiant has like two planes) so we did not get to the condo until it was technically Saturday morning. Oh well, we'd wake up much closer to the beach than we do at home!

Breakfast at Skillet's is a requirement

First, though, we had to visit the newest Skillet's location because it is our favorite breakfast spot. This location had ample outdoor seating so we were quite pleased. After breakfast we made a quick turnaround to get to the beach!

I love this view!

I read a book and Jackson played in the waves and all was well in the world!

The beach pretty much to ourselves

Happy boy!

My beach hat representing the area's airport

After we'd had enough sun and felt crispy, we headed to Publix to grossly overpay for some groceries. Listen, you guys, the groceries in Naples are so darned expensive. I think everything is at least 50% more expensive. It could just be that Publix has kind of a monopoly in the area, but it is always painful to grocery shop there. In the summer all of the restaurants run specials to try to get the few folks in town to dine with them so it is sometimes cheaper to just dine out! This trip we did a little of both.

Sunday morning had a few storms, but it cleared up so we did our beach routine. We fall into such an easy rhythm when we're in Naples.

The view from my chair

Date night!

Then, Monday, Tropical Storm Emily hit. UGH! She came out of nowhere and just dumped rain on us!

Stormy day beach walks

Trying not to blow away

Sunset during a storm

Catchin' sunset

We went to Skillet's again on Tuesday morning. We love it. When we headed back to the condo, all seemed well then the heavens opened and it started to rain again. Bummer. The condo doesn't have internet service during non-season so Jackson left Tuesday morning to go send some work e-mails from Starbucks. He got caught in another storm and couldn't get back to the condo for about three hours! The Starbucks is about 5 minutes away normally. It was insane!

FLOOD!

Remember we had the tiniest rental car ever so he could not risk flooding it out. We didn't want to own that little piece of junk, you know!

Jackson's view trying to get back
to the condo during a storm- it looks like he'd
drive into a river!

There was a finally enough of a break in the storms that some of the water started to soak into the ground and Jackson was able to get out from where he was trapped in the rental car. He kept his spirits up during the whole thing. I just sat at the condo reading a book- ha! Then, as soon as he got safely back to our place, the sky dumped AGAIN! We looked out and realized that the balcony was getting flooded really quickly because the gutters were full! AGH!

Thankfully the downpour didn't last too long and we were able to stop any water from coming into the condo. There are so many trees around that their little twigs and stuff are just hard to keep up with. We made a maintenance call to make sure the gutters were clear once we left and there was no one to sweep out flood waters!

Luckily, the skies cleared for a little bit in the afternoon and we were able to get in a few hours at the beach. We were basically on call for sunshine. As soon as it looked clear, we were beach bound!

The sun came back out- head to the beach!

More storms coming...

We had some more storms Tuesday night and then finally all was clear. We'd made it through a tropical storm. Wednesday, our last day, was gorgeous. We sat out on the beach for as long as we could before it was time to clean up, pack up and head out to the airport.

Finally! A clear day on our last day!

In amazing news, our flight on Allegiant home was on time and we even landed a few minutes early. It was a true miracle! (Can you tell I loathe Allegiant?)

Suntanned and tired--headed home!

We got back around 8:30 so we had time to get unpacked, laundry started and get ready for a busy Thursday. We always seem to land really late so it was kind of nice to be home at a decent hour this time. We've decided we probably won't go back to Naples so late in the summer again. The weather is just too hard to predict. It was still nice to just take a break, though, and fit in as much beach time as we could!