NAPLES
La Playa Beach & Golf Resort
United States
From Hotel: 🚶 15 min · 🚕 5 min → Naples Museum of Art
A modern museum in downtown Naples with rotating exhibitions of contemporary and classical art from around the world. The building itself is architecturally striking, and the collection spans sculpture, painting, and photography in gallery spaces overlooking a serene courtyard.
🏛️ Tuesday - Sunday 10:00am - 4:00pm
🚫 Closed Monday
⏰ ~1 hr 30 min
No pictures found.
🚶 16 min · 🚕 4 min → Naples Pier
The defining landmark of Naples, a 1,643-foot public fishing pier extending into the Gulf of Mexico. Built in 1888, it remains a favorite gathering spot for families, anglers, and sunset watchers — pristine white sand beach on both sides, dolphins and pelicans in the water, and unobstructed ocean views.
🚕 12 min → Caribbean Gardens
A 43-acre zoo built within a former botanical garden, with over 1,300 exotic animals from around the world. Natural habitat exhibits, primate islands, and a free-flight aviary create immersive experiences. The alligator feeding shows are crowd favorites.
🏛️ Daily 9:30am - 5:30pm
⏰ ~2 hr
🚕 20 min → Naples Botanical Garden
A 170-acre garden showcasing plant collections from around the world — Brazilian gardens with tropical foliage, Mediterranean sections with olive trees and lavender, and an Asian garden with water features. A peaceful retreat where you can spend hours wandering themed landscapes.
🏛️ Daily 9:00am - 5:00pm
⏰ ~2 hr
🚕 20 min → hotel
From Hotel: 🚕 45 min → Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary
A 2.25-mile boardwalk through pristine cypress swamp and hardwood forest managed by the Audubon Society. One of the largest old-growth cypress forests in the United States, home to alligators, bald eagles, and wildlife visible from the elevated wooden walkway without disturbing the ecosystem.
🏛️ Daily 7:30am - 5:30pm
⏰ ~1 hr 30 min
🚕 18 min → hotel
From Hotel: 🚕 12 min → Delnor-Wiggins Pass State Park
A 166-acre beachfront park with pristine white sand and clear Gulf waters. Mangrove forests, unspoiled dunes, and excellent shell collecting. Quieter than Naples Pier, it is ideal for swimming, picnicking, and exploring natural coastal habitat.
🏛️ Daily 8:00am - 8:30pm
⏰ ~2 hr
🚕 28 min → Rookery Bay
A 110,000-acre marine sanctuary protecting mangrove shorelines and shallow estuary. The visitor center offers guided walks and rentals into the mangrove channels where you encounter manatees, dolphins, and hundreds of bird species. A pristine window into Florida's fragile coastal ecosystem.
🏛️ Daily 9:00am - 4:00pm
⏰ ~2 hr
🚕 25 min → hotel
🌳 Some of These Cypress Trees Predate the United States
The boardwalk at Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary passes through bald cypress trees that were already centuries old when Columbus reached the Caribbean — some are estimated at 500 to 600 years old, part of the largest remaining old-growth bald cypress forest in the world. Almost none of Florida's original cypress forest survived the logging that swept the state through the 1940s and 1950s; loggers cut nearly everything comparable. This particular stand exists today only because a small coalition mobilized in 1953 and 1954, buying and protecting the land before timber crews reached it. The trees along the walkway are older than the country the sanctuary sits in.
Naples Pier has never actually been the same pier twice. The original structure went up in 1888, and it's been knocked down and rebuilt after hurricanes repeatedly ever since — in 1910, 1926, 1944, 1960, and again after Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Ian decades later. Every "historic" version visitors have walked out on has technically been a different physical structure than the one before it, rebuilt again and again on the same footprint because the city keeps choosing to put it back rather than let the Gulf have the final word.
