If you are looking for a change of pace, but something that is fun, cultural and picturesque I can thoroughly recommend Winter Park in North Orlando. It’s a very different flavour Florida, with cobbled streets, high-end boutiques, together with great places to eat, gorgeous parks (the most per capita than anywhere else in the state) and galleries, a fabulous place to spend the day.
There are many lakes in Winter Park, and one fantastic place to start to get to know the area, would be the Winter Park Scenic Boat tour. Admission is $12.00 for adults and $6.00 for children (ages 2 through 11) under 2 are free.
After we’d wandered around Winter Park, familiarising ourselves with the area, we decided to eat, at BurgerFi. It was still early, but it was so buzzing with locals, we thought it must be a good sign. We were not wrong, the best burgers EVER, so delicious! The girls tried the hot dogs, I had a beautifully crisp quinoa burger, white cheddar cheese, lettuce, tomato, and BurgerFi sauce served on multigrain bun. Whilst Tall Dad went for the cheeseburger, Angus beef, double American cheese, lettuce, tomato, and BurgerFi sauce. You could even have a burger without the bun, if you were counting carbs, and they would wrap it in lettice. We also shared fries (with their skin on to keep all of the nutrients in) and onion rings. The onion rings were again, the best I have ever tasted, so huge and crispy!
A couple of doors down from BurgerFi was another great find, Rocket Fizz.
We love trying new foods, and we were on holiday so treated the girls to some sweets too. I’ll forgive them the One Direction lifesize cut outs in the window, which were tempting Miss N, convinced they would fit in the suitcase!
It was amazing how many root beers, and other sodas that had on offer, even our favourite Bundaburg from Australia.
There was huge selection of salt water taffy (I can’t be the only one who that always make me think of Ross Geller from Friends) which is Miss N’s absolute favourite, so she bought a bag of that as her treat. There was even a UK sweet section, but we stuck with the fantastic, and sometimes very weird and wonderful American ones. Even as a vegetarian I was fascinated by the comprehensive bacon sweet section!
Next up, we visited the Peterbrooke Chocolatiers, we sampled their speciality of chocolate popcorn. The sweet and saltiness worked perfectly!
Miss N couldn’t resist a frozen chocolate covered banana, which was handmade for her as we waited.
The photograph below, shows the main street ‘Park Avenue‘ no less, which is beautiful, tree-lined and cobbled, with a freight train running along side it. It really is so different from anywhere else we have been to in Florida.
Also on this street, just in the distance is the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art – home to the world’s most comprehensive collection of works by American designer Louis Comfort Tiffany, just beautiful! Admission is very reasonable too, at $5 Adults and free for children younger than 12. I definiely recommend here:
We even spent a little time riding around the area in our car looking at the local streets and houses, what an amazing place to live!
We really did have a fun day at Winter Park, it was a very welcome change of pace. Gorgeous surroundings, and somewhere we all said we would definitely want to visit again!
If you are planning a trip to Orlando, can I recommend www.orlandoholidayplanning.com a fantastic tool to plan and organise your trip. Top tips, and ideas of what to do whether you want to do the parks or beyond.
Thank you for reading
Other posts about Orlando that you might be interested in :
Winter Park : Fun away from the theme parks.
Shopping : My hints and tips on shopping in Orlando.
Entertainment : Blue Man Group
Nature : Boggy Creek
Looks amazing, and I’d never heard of it. Salt water taffy is the food of the devil, though.
It really was fab. I tried the diabetic taffy, and that was urm…interesting!?
Ooh we did Disney World this year, and I was gutted we didn’t have enough time to explore some of the less obvious places Orlando has to offer. I’m putting together a list of things to do next time 🙂
It’s hard to fit it all in, I had lots of plans we managed very few!
Sound like such a fun thing to do. Especially with winter crawling up on us.