Look beyond the Mickey Mouse-themed paraphernalia and Orlando’s true cultural scene comes to the fore. Orlando caters to the active, the inquisitive, the offbeat and the urban explorer, as the city expands and regenerates constantly. Here are Culture Trip’s must-do activities for any new visitor to the city.
Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art
Museum, Park
In the fashionable and historic district of Winter Park, the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art houses the largest collection of Tiffany glass in the world, encompassing lamps, leaded-glass windows, jewellery, art glass and pottery. Check out the museum’s recent Tiffany Wing extension from 2011, which contains the restored Daffodil Terrace from Louis Comfort Tiffany’s Long Island Estate.
An airboat tour is great way to escape the crowds of Orlando and see the real natural heart of Florida. Spirit of the Swamp operates airboat rides and nature tours of the marshes and swamps of Lake Tohopekaliga, and is about a 30-minute drive outside the city. In these tours you can get up close and personal to Florida’s alligators in the wild, and also see bald eagles, ospreys and wildfowl while speeding through the wetland waterways and tall grass.
It’s no secret that Orlando is fast becoming a destination of note for craft beer aficionados (check out Redlight Redlight Beer Parlour for its selection of 23 rotating drafts and 250 bottled beers). But for true microbrew street-cred, you should hit up the now decade-old Orlando Brewing Company, the only USDA-certified organic brewery east of the Mississippi. The brewery not only possesses 35 ales, lagers and seasonal microbrews on tap at any one time, it now also offers free brewery tours Monday to Saturday at 6pm, original live music on Friday and Saturday nights and ‘dog days’ on Sunday with reducing pricing during ‘yappy hour’ if you bring your dog along to the brewery.
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Harry P. Leu Botanic Gardens
Forest
Faced with an onslaught of theme parks and shopping centres, it is easy to overlook pockets of natural beauty amidst the urban sprawl of Orlando. It would be a real lost opportunity, however, not to pay a visit to the 50-acre Harry P. Leu Gardens and revel in its abundant flora. Possessing a citrus grove and a butterfly garden, horticulturalists and urban explorers will find much to admire amongst the gardens’ 1,000 rose bushes and the largest collection of camellias in North America, season permitting.
Just 45 minutes from Orlando is the Kennedy Space Center, the site of the launching of numerous NASA spacecraft. Launches are rare, but are certainly worth seeing if possible. There is also a visitor complex, which has numerous interactive exhibits on space exploration, simulations and an IMAX cinema. You can tour the facilities, and the Apollo/Saturn V Center is a particular highlight as it chronicles the history of manned missions to the moon and contains the largest rocket in history. The Rocket Garden is a surreal experience, as you walk among several towering rockets and climb into replica capsules.
Budding clowns might be tempted to try out the Orlando Circus School and its full roster of classes for adults and children. Some of the more exhilarating classes include the German wheel, trampolining and aerial arts. Proudly railing against any kind of homogeneity in the Orlando cultural scene, the school has been tirelessly promoting and encouraging the unique culture of the circus.
Several of Orlando’s lakeside neighbourhoods boast the most hyped restaurants in the whole state. One of the more eye-catching prospects, in the cosmopolitan Ivanhoe Village, is Santiago’s Bodega, an enclave of surreal modern art in the backyard of Orlando. Robert Henry Thompson’s bold paintings and interior design complement a small-plate tapas-style menu intended to invoke the spirit of Ernest Hemingway, his characters in The Old Man and The Sea, and the original outpost in Key West.
23 years old and MA (Hons) English & Film Studies graduate of the University of St Andrews. Budding filmmaker and screenwriter. My three great loves are flat whites, Saturday Night Live and the music of Taylor Alison Swift. I also have a weird fantasy about having Stanley Tucci as my dad.
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