Naples Florida Trolley Tours

If you're going to Naples and want a quick and easy way to get an idea of the layout of the town's sights, don't even think about taking the Naples Trolley Tour to do it. That is the mistake I made on a recent visit to the town. I felt that it was a total waste of $20.

In other towns I have visited, these trolley tours were a great way to get a good overview of the town. They went by all the important sights and gave interesting points and history tidbits that were informative. It helped you to plan which sights were worth planning a more detailed visit to explore later.

I knew we were in trouble AFTER boarding and seeing that most of the stops were at hotels and expensive resorts outside of the area. Here they picked up more unsuspecting travelers to complete the rounds of this boring adventure.

On boarding the trolley the driver informed all passengers on the trolley that the only one allowed to talk on his car was HIM and he wouldn't tolerate anyone else talking or using a cell phone. Hm-m-m I thought we were paying HIM! I felt sorry for a mother who was trying to keep an otherwise very well behaved child interested. The driver kept stopping his speech and giving her dirty looks.

He did point out a few points of interest as we whizzed by them such as, "If you go a block and a half up that street you will see the 1000 Ft municipal pier., or there is a wonderful beach two blocks that way." Wish he would have ridden by a little closer, so we could see it for ourselves!
We did however go right into the driveways of all the expensive hotels where he gave a mini commercial on all of their restaurants. He made a point of telling us what wonderful food they all served. We gave up when we passed a Wal Mart and he launched into a speech about how many were in the town!
Although we were told we could disembark at any point, no one got off because there was nothing worth seeing on this tour. Additionally the next trolley was an hour later and if you happened to miss it the next was two hours later!

The only interesting points were at the very end of the tour when we were only a few blocks from where we initially boarded. My advice- keep the $20 and walk around the small downtown area on foot. You will see some interesting old Florida type architecture, some really cool shops , bars and outdoor cafes The area is known as Third Street south and Fifth Ave., or Old City Naples, and is worth doing on foot but not whizzing by at 30 miles an hour!