5.26 miles! that’s how far i ran on sunday morning in naples, and i still can’t quite believe it. here’s the screen shot of my fitbit statistics. now, these stats are obviously not entirely correct – there is no earthly way i could ever, ever run a mile in 6:41, like it claimed, and really, i couldn’t run it in 8:21, either. even the 10 minute miles are quite dubious! but i know i ran for that many minutes, and it feels like i ran that long. so yaaay for running in florida! except no way that it was really that fast.
after that excitement, i spent some time in the front yard of our lovely air b&b rental home, doing a lot of stretching. as i squatted down into child’s pose and breathed in the sweet grass scent, i wondered if anybody would see me and think me odd.
but nobody was around! nobody drove by, nobody walked or biked by, and i was out there stretching for about 20 minutes. nice.
in the afternoon we took a great boat ride on the Naples Princess, a “luxury yacht” as described on their site. here’s the view from the top deck as we started out.
this pool was at the back of the building that houses the boat company, so i’m not sure who, exactly, gets to swim in it. i hope somebody takes advantage of it!
we passed so very many huge and luxurious homes and boats as we cruised down the bay.
what a ridiculously huge place! can you see the girl there, right in the middle, sunning herself? i hope she was wearing sunscreen! i kept thinking about how odd it would be to own one of these huge mansions, but there would be tour boats going by all the time, with people like me taking pictures. the guy narrating the cruise said that no celebrities lived in these places because they weren’t gated communities and anybody could just drive right up.
we saw lots of these infinity pools.
that looked like an extra-speedy boat.
i believe this is a chris craft boat, in front of this modest home.
another beautiful day! it was a little bit warm up there on the top deck, and i kept running down to the open covered deck below, and finally mom and wanda went down there to sit in the shade. plenty of other people relaxed in the air-conditioned enclosed part of the ship. it was all good.
i guess this is somebody’s house, even though it looks more like an office building or a hotel.
as we went past these boats, i thought a cop had pulled this boat over.
but a couple standing next to me was talking about it – they sounded like they spent a lot of time on the water, and the woman said that she thought the other boat was actually towing the sheriff. that sure would be embarrassing.
another chris craft. lots of boats and wave runners zoomed all around us as we traveled.
heading out to sea! not really; it was only an hour and a half tour, so we only went a little way out and then headed back in.
but what a view of land!
hmm, i can’t figure out if the buildings in the distance are part of naples, or farther up in ft. myers beach.
and here’s the luckiest dog in the world! do you think he knows how lucky he is, zooming by in that fancy yacht?
this pontoon boat doesn’t look much bigger than ours, and i can’t imagine taking one out onto the ocean.
soooo happy!
beautiful sailboat.
it looked like these two fancy yachts were identical. his and hers? two brothers? father and son? hard to say.
we got some friendly people to take our picture as we headed back in.
i love these boat lifts.
the time went by too quickly. nearby was this little shopping area called tin city that we’d gone to on friday; we explored a little more of it today, and i’d seen a big platter that i kept thinking about, so i went back and bought it after our trip.
as we were sailing back into the bay, i looked up restaurants on the water – the narrator mentioned some restaurant that we passed, but it didn’t get such good reviews on yelp. i found another one, called the dock, which sounded good, and mom and wanda were up for trying it out.
we stopped at a cute little shop nearby called Random Acts of Art. it was filled with all kinds of beautiful, interesting, cool stuff.
i ordered raw oysters and we shared a pitcher of margaritas. the oysters weren’t the best i’ve ever had, and i guess it’s a good thing that the margaritas weren’t very strong, since i had to drive us back home. but wanda had the best scallop salad she’d had in her life, so that made me happy. and all the seating was outside, which was good.
afterwards we walked out on the dock, and i hope this pelican was ok; he let us get very, very close to him.
there were lots of pelicans all around.
many of them had their wings all stretched out, drying themselves, maybe?
here’s the restaurant from the dock. very busy place.
i don’t know if this is a big goose or what, but we had a few of them in back of our rental house, too. ok, i spent two seconds looking it up, and i believe it’s a muscovy duck. seriously, how did we find anything out before the internet???
we couldn’t go to any of the other nearby shops because it was sunday night and they were closed, so we went back and mom and wanda watched one of the debates. mom enjoyed wine out of the glass i found for her in one of the tin city shops.
a good time was had by all.
ok then,
mrs. hughes, back in gray gray illinois.