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Good location, but...
I just returned from a lovely stay in Naples, despite the disappointment of this hotel. Naples is a beautiful town with lots of shopping, plenty of good food, and lots to do on the gorgeous Gulf of Mexico. The Inn on Fifth, however, is not a top hotel choice by any means. I grew up staying at Holiday Inns and Best Westerns and even some of those have this place beat. As you drive down the beautiful, upscale Fifth Street to the hotel you get excited about where you are staying and the exterior of the hotel is lovely. However, once you are past the lobby which is also nice, there is much left to be desired. The hallways were not kept clean--crumbs on the floor, dirty glasses on tables, room service outside of a room for about 20 hours! The rooms are quite small and the bathrooms are even smaller. The water in the shower comes out very slowly, which is a major inconvenience for females with long or thick hair who just spent the day at the beach and have a head full of sand! This seems picky, yes, but when you are paying 150-200$ a night, the showers should be better than your own at home. The worst part of the room, which did not get any better as the week went on, was the nasty smell eminating from the air conditioner--kind of a combination of cigarette smoke and mold with a hint of urine. Even if you are fine with the room, that smell kind of ruins the ambiance. Also, the room never felt like it got cold, it always felt kind of damp and musty. The pool on the 2nd floor is 105 degrees (not an exaggeration). It's so hot, you do not want to even get in in the afternoon, let alone try and cool off in there. As for room service, it will cost you about 20$ per person for a basic breakfast, which we did not do as there are plenty of cute places to have breakfast on Fifth Street that are a bit more reasonable. I called down to get some extra towels and this was a major ordeal as there was only one person at the front desk, so she could not leave. I found it strange that there was only one person working in the entire hotel at 9PM at night.
Some of the previous reviews mention that you do not need a car. I disagree completely. Unless you only want to stay on Fifth Street and go only to the beach at the end of Fifth Street, you NEED a car. There is another very cute shopping area on 3rd Avenue, which is too far to walk and all of the other shopping areas are several miles away. The better beaches are several blocks up or down from Fifth Street as well, so if you are carrying chairs or anything and it is 95 degrees, you just can't walk it. Bring lots of quarters for the meters at the beach because they will ticket you 22$ if you don't feed the meter (20 minutes for one quarter). For parking at the hotel, you can park all up and down Fifth Street for free if you can find a spot and I always did, but you can also self-park behind the hotel for free. Otherwise, you can valet all week if you have the money. We drove up to Ft. Myers one day just for fun--don't do it. It is dirty and crowded up there and the beaches are not as nice as in Naples.
As far as Naples--loved it. It's beautiful, clean, and everything I ate in every restaurant was TOP quality. One of the best places we ate at, was in a little shopping area about 3 blocks away called "Tin City." It sounds kind of creepy, but it's an old fishing dock area with tons of very cute shops and great places to eat overlooking the water. We ate at the Riverwalk Cafe and had Seafood Linguini that we are still talking about and Coconut Shrimp that we were just speechless over. We ended up eating there 3 times and had Grouper Tacos and Pecan Encrusted Red Snapper. Both of these were also DELICIOUS. The best part about this restaurant is the wonderful scenery and the pelicans sitting on the dock right next to you. If you throw some bread in the water, you'll see some catfish come up for it. Tin City was very fun and much more relaxed than Fifth Avenue, which can become a bit "hoity toity" after a few days--women wearing 4" heels, loads of diamonds, and pants suits to breakfast while it's 110 degrees out! I felt like telling them to get over themselves and put a bathing suit on. You should know, this is not the kind of place where you can just throw on a bathing suit cover up or a t-shirt after a few hours at the beach or pool. Bring nice clothes if you come here or you will stand out.
The other 2 things you must do in Naples are: 1) the double sunshine cruise that leaves out of Tin City and gives you a fantastic view of the 100s of $10-100 million homes along the coast in naples. This was worth every penny and 2) go to every sunset on the beach that you can fit in and don't leave when the sun goes down--sometimes the best part of the sunset is after the sun goes behind the water. Wear lots of mosquito spray for this, bring a camera, a glass of wine, and enjoy 2 relaxing hours of pure magic. This was THE best part of the whole trip.
I would definitely go back to Naples, but I would stay somewhere else---probably at the Registry, which is right on the beach up about 20 blocks from the Fifth Street Beach. Have fun.
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