No Happier Hour: See My City (Naples, FL Edition)

On Thursday, Jess started a link-up called See My City, where we can all show 5 things about where we live, that we think other people might find interesting. I was excited to do this, mostly because I really wanted to show off to all of you bloggers above the Mason-Dixon the reason y'all move to the south when you hit 50, and make you really jealous.

Problem is, last week was so insanely busy at work that I pretty much was an absentee blogger. But Jess assured me that the link-up would be up for a week, so here I am now! Get ready to be jealous...

1. I currently live in Naples, FL, which- if you don't know- is on the southwestern coast of Florida. To be specific, without telling you stalkers my actual address, I live in 'east' Naples, which is basically code for '10 minutes to the east is swamp an ten minutes to the west is beach.' I live south of the very last exit on the western coast of Florida.

2. Naples is one of the wealthiest cities in America, listing 6th on highest per capita income in America, with the second highest amount of millionaires per capita. This makes for A LOT of terrible traffic and expensive food, but it also means that it's one of the most well taken care of cities in the country. You can tell just from driving down good old US 41, by looking at the medians. Full of bright green grass, surrounded by mature palm trees and flourishing flowers.

3. If you've ever heard of a 'Swamp Buggy' before, it was invented here and you should come see them race. Every year, there are three swamp buggy racing events. The races started back in the 1940's and continue to be a main event. They used to look like this:

And now they look a little more like this:

4. Our beaches. (Almost) enough said. The only thing that I'll add to this is that I was born and raised in Sarasota about 2 hours north of here and it legitimately has the BEST beaches in America. Voted #1 so many different times, by so many different news outlets that I can't even count. You'll just have to come and check them out. Naples are nice, too, though.

5. Lastly, I just wanted to talk about my favorite place to spend time; 5th Avenue. This is where all of the higher-end restaurants and boutique shopping are. I could legitimately just walk up and down 5th avenue all day long, and never buy anything, and still be totally content. At night, there are white lights strung all through the trees, and street performers sing live. You can get an amazing cocktail or plate of food from any corner, and two of my favorite stores are there: the Sperry store and the Tracy Negoshian boutique.