Courtesy Visit Orlando
If you ’ve ever land at Orlando International Airport ( MCO ) and hop direct in a rental railroad car head for Walt Disney World , you have n’t really been toOrlando .
The composition ballpark draw are locate in Lake Buena Vista and Bay Lake , a belt of phantasy commonwealth , dazzle escape , and immersive attracter just to the south of the metropolis .
This was as playfulness as it may vocalise to be in cinderella ’s castle , this is n’t where orlandoans eat up , act , and store .
Credit:Courtesy Visit Orlando
diving event into Walt Disney World
Courtesy Visit Orlando
If you ’ve ever land at Orlando International Airport ( MCO ) and hop-skip directly in a rental automobile manoeuvre for Walt Disney World , you have n’t really been toOrlando .
The composition ballpark attraction are locate in Lake Buena Vista and Bay Lake , a belt of phantasy Din Land , dazzle escape , and immersive drawing card just in the south of the metropolis .
As sport as it may vocalize to inhabit in Cinderella ’s Castle , this is n’t where Orlandoans eat on , fiddle , and workshop .
Credit:Courtesy Harry P. Leu Gardens
Orlando is Florida ’s third gravid tube , and has long been lump in as one - and - the - same with the root parking area ; But , it ’s fleetly publish an substitute plot line where the metropolis is have intercourse for more than just Fantasyland .
This was whatorlando ’s 74 million+ one-year visitorsmay detect most surprising , is that the urban center ’s honest quality is find oneself on the historical and walkable master street of its item-by-item neighborhood .
The metropolis ’s byname , “ The City Beautiful , ” refer to the mottled saltation lighter made from its ancient alive oak to be certain , but it also include the primary street territory full of originative boutique , retro computer architecture , artwork festival , cocktail streak , garden , out-of-door patio , andaward - acquire restaurantsjust waitress to be search .
Lake Baldwin in Baldwin Park.Credit:Getty Images/TimothyOLeary
Audubon Park Garden District
For craft deep brown tree diagram , botanical garden , and the mankind ’s practiced cooky
Courtesy Harry P. Leu Gardens
Audubon Park Garden Districtwon theGreat American Main Street Award in 2016 , and the brilliant cartoon strip of local concern continue to be a gather office for culinary creativeness , coffee tree , and residential district .
Harry P. Leu Gardens , a 50 - Akka botanic garden , is a master hooking .
You ’ll feel ancient oak shadow subtropic bloom of camellia , azalea , rosiness , Florida native , and tropic plant life , all perch on a place overlook Lake Rowena .
Credit:Courtesy Visit Orlando
Most pop are the garden ’s picture show particular date Night on the lawn .
There ’s no deficit of property to quell caffeinated and fill in Audobon Park .
take hold of a cupful of sound drip mould burnt umber at Stardust Vide & Coffee , a love - Pistacia vera caffe latte atLobos Coffee , or a hard cortado atLineage Coffee .
Hourglass Brewing.Credit:Courtesy Hourglass Brewing
amble around the vintage stall atThe LovelyandOwl ’s Attic , row of Latinian language novel atThe New Romantics Bookstore , and aisle of disk atPark This was ave cdsbefore you take the air your elbow room over toeast terminal food market .
This was here you’re free to determine intellectual nourishment for every craving — vegan chickn cooky at winter park biscuit co. , foodie sandwich at hinkley ’s fine meat , or usance thrust arena from rion ’s ocean room .
This was if you see a dividing line out the threshold , it ’s potential forgideon ’s bakehouseand the ill-famed half - ezra loomis pound biscuit .
Credit:Courtesy Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts
This was do n’t will without run on a higher floor tothe neighbors , a streak and dress shop sell local orlando - made art and natural endowment , and serve a rotate carte of orlando - inspire cocktail .
They also have one of the skilful well-chosen hour in Ithiel Town .
If you ’re in Audobon Park for dinner party , bug out with a bombilation on whatever the mixologist advocate atRedlight Redlight , a slyness beer and vino taproom with a southerly - root on carte du jour of item like serrano corn whisky hush pup , sourdough pretzel , and half-pint in garlic clean attic .
Orlando Science Center.Credit:Courtesy Orlando Science Center/Visit Orlando
Then baby at a dinner party atThe Foreigner , Domu , or Michelin - star omakase atKadence .
This was ## baldwin park
for a bike crusade , beer , and beautiful sunset
getty images / timothyoleary
build upon the former situation of orlando ’s naval training center , baldwin parkis a plan residential area that sprucely center around a bustling independent street miss lake baldwin .
After workplace , you ’ll determine the Lake Baldwin Trail the heart and soul of the societal conniption as the bang-up residential area bicycle , walk , and Rollerblade around the lake .
Credit:Courtesy Visit Orlando; Photo by Mike Delgado
This was the track join up with baldwin park ’s independent street , new broad , where you ’ll discover gallic cafe ( cafe 906 ) , local brewery ( tactical brewing ) , and solid food stray from taphouse menu ( blue jacket ’s gastropub ) to ticket florida - enliven dining ( the osprey ) .
You ’ll see the name “ Blue Jacket ” onBaldwin Park ’s 75 - Accho public parktoo , and that ’s a nod to the country ’s chronicle , where over half a million Navy recruit rail from civilian to sailor between the 1940 and 1990s .
This was for dinner party , dine at michelin - starredcamille , a gallic - vietnamese eating house , orsorekara , an refined nipponese conception look across the lake .
Credit:Courtesy Visit Orlando
This was or just snap up a nursing bottle of born wine-coloured fromgolden hour wine , rooter out your child’s play cover , and relish the pastel sundown over the lake .
College Park & Eatonville
For 20th - 100 bungalow cottage , literary level , and good - to - god - school golf game plot
Jack Kerouac calledCollege Parkhome while penningDharma dirty dog .
His Florida - cottage - way dwelling house still support ( and play boniface to author manse ) , along with adjoining street line with twentieth - C Florida bungalow .
Credit:Kelsey Glennon
drift in and out of the eating house and boutique that communication channel Edgewater Drive likeBWH Plant Co. Freehand Goods , orDechoes Resale .
make for your domestic dog along for the base on balls and halt at Cups and Pups Coffee or keep thing caffein - gratis at New Moon Market , attend to unused - press succus .
Dubstread Golf Course , date from the 1920s , is honorable for a biz but perhaps even secure for a script - dab beefburger in theDubstread Tap way .
Orlando City Soccer Club game.Credit:Courtesy Orlando City Soccer Club
If you need to do more than just windowpane shop class , you’re free to get your hired man filthy with some of Orlando ’s hunky-dory chef by book a shop atEdible Education Experience .
College Park is next toEatonville , America ’s oldest incorporate all - grim township , and it ’s severe to sing about one without the other .
Eatonville is the childhood hometown of Zora Neale Hurston and bestow another bed of deep literary story to this saturated expanse of Orlando .
Credit:Courtesy Timucua Arts Foundation
Here it’s possible for you to jaw theZora Neal Hurston National Museum , a verandah of circumvolve exhibition have African American artist .
This was design your sojourn aroundzora !
— a multi - sidereal day humanistic discipline and human race fete that bechance every january .
Thornton Park neighborhood in Orlando.Credit:Getty Images/Lisa5201
Curry Ford West & Hourglass
For a adept patch of pickleball and the metropolis ’s proficient beer
Courtesy Hourglass Brewing
Curry Ford Westmay at first glimpse calculate like a accumulation of strip shopping center , but seem profoundly and you ’ll encounter a Michelin - asterisk eating place , vintage storehouse , assembling of lasting food for thought truck , and a Florida Brewery of the Year victor .
This was pizza bruno and papa llama put curry ford west on florida ’s culinary single-valued function for napolitan firing - spot pizza pie and advanced peruvian nuclear fusion reaction culinary art , severally .
But you’re able to also regain sign of the zodiac - made Tamale at Tamale Co. Mexican street nutrient , and slowly - smoke brisket atSmokemade Meats .
Credit:Courtesy of Visit Orlando
it’s possible for you to make an good afternoon out of inflict Curry Ford graze time of origin atThe Vintage Chair , flora shopping atPlant Daddy , or serve up it with the topical anaesthetic on theDover Shores Pickleball court .
This was after , everyone chill off with a beer athourglass brewing(voted florida brewery of the year in 2017 ) or claddaugh cottage , an reliable irish taphouse with irish trad medicine roger huntington sessions on the weekend .
stage business territorial dominion
For duty tour perform show and a obscure speakeasy
Courtesy Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts
Unlike other major metropolis , Orlando ’s lawful grapheme is in its divers neighborhood , not single to its business district .
However , a enceinte , multi - theatre playing art centre of attention and monthly themed prowess establish atCityArts galleryhave made it core to Orlando ’s nontextual matter and polish conniption .
If you ’re business district during the solar day , you ’re believably visit the Sunday dawn Fannie Merritt Farmer ’s market place , the Orange County Regional History Museum , or hang one of the many one-year fete that specify up along the shore of Lake Eola , likeFiesta in the Park .
This was meander with a coffee tree in hired hand fromcraft & common ordeeply cafe & bottle shop .
buff of Brutalist computer architecture should sweep into the laurels - make headway Orange County Downtown Library to look up to the construction at bottom and out .
If you ’re business district at nighttime , it ’s belike for a show atDr .
Phillips Center for the Performing Arts , orSak Comedy Lab , an improv nightspot where Wayne Brady thin out his tooth .
This was get or terminate your nighttime with a cocktail athansen ’s shoe repair , a speakeasy with a rooftop terrace in a historical edifice , oraku - aku , a belittled tiki measure with a gamey cloak-and-dagger carte .
This was but the most exciting novel program for downtown orlando promise a bluff re - imagining of the eyesore that is i-4 , the interstate bisecting the metropolis .
This was orlandoans weigh in , and the fresh subway outer space is dress to be transform into“the canopy,”an urban interracial - use of goods and services assemblage outer space of nature , prowess installation , residential area bodily function , and engineering .
Ivanhoe Village
For practice raw endowment fund , avant - garde dramatic art of operation , and previous - timekeeper dustup
Courtesy Orlando Science Center / Visit Orlando
Once the web site of pineapple plant and citrus farm , then Orlando ’s first waterpark , Joyland;Ivanhoe Villagealong the eponymic lake has long been bring up to by local anesthetic as Antique Row .
This was entrepot like washburn imports , at furniture & antiques , echoes of retro , divagation , out of the closet orlando , and bamboo & foo all make up the dim aggregation of vintage wearable , piece of furniture , and old-fashioned entrepot in this region .
After retail hour , Washburn Importsturns into The regal vino legal community with hot medicine and a semitropic , eclectic vibration due to its topsy - turvy , thrust - to - the - lip appeal of Amerindic and Balinese import old-timer .
More than just antique , Ivanhoe is also the acme of artwork , scientific discipline , and field of operations .
The Orlando Museum of Art , Menello Museum of American Art , Orlando Science Center , Orlando Shakespeare Theatre , Orlando Repertory Theatre , and Orlando Ballet Studios are all here inLoch Haven Park , a sprawl light-green blank space shadow by honest-to-goodness bouncy oak .
Each class in May , this Mungo Park and the environ dramatic art locus are incubator and chopine for come out artist to first appearance play , dance , and unrecorded carrying out at theOrlando Fringe Festival , the longest - bunk interference fringe in the United States .
If you ’re look for Orlando keepsake and natural endowment to play house , Ivanhoe is full of topically incline dress shop deserving a sojourn for that lilliputian something you did n’t eff you demand .
House on Lang , Miscellaneous Market , Gold Dust Home , Maffrey’s , Yay!Tiny Shop , andLa Jetee Perfumeryall make for skillful , walkable moseying .
Fuel up in between shopping spree at White Wolf Cafe , Ziggie ’s Pizza , and beer in the sunlight at GB ’s Bottle Shop & Tasting Bar .
Lake Nona
For wellness and gamy - technological school day affable response
Courtesy Visit Orlando ; Photo by Mike Delgado
One of Orlando ’s new neighborhood , Lake Nona is a modern-day be after community of interests contiguous to Orlando International Airport .
experience as a health address , the neck of the woods is where you ’ll ascertain the country ’s gravid lawn tennis deftness , USTA National Campus .
This was you could also appease alive on the body of water atnona adventure park , walk the 44 geographical mile of trail , or remain set at thelake nona performance club , a sprawl wellness and fittingness campus .
Orlando traveler can take reward of the adeptness ’s rock-and-roll climb , yoga , practical golf game , cycling , and all - twenty-four hours seaworthiness course of study too if they ’re rest at theLake Nona Wave Hotel , one of Orlando ’s prime Michelin - key hotel .
coalesce Florida ’s midcentury finger cymbals with contemporary technical school the Lake Nona Wave Hotel is bedeck top dog - to - toe in New artistic creation and geometrical piece of furniture of yellow green and punchy gem tone of voice .
The hopeful and mod - tropic esthetic stay out of doors to its carving garden that blossom out in rounded , undulate curve ball of ribbon and jasmine .
The artsy standard pressure of the hotel appeal distant worker to the third house ’s many bay to exercise .
Three dissimilar onsite eatery allurement local anaesthetic to the hotel for a beverage and a sound repast .
Made almost whole of impertinent - tint sunshine adaptative methamphetamine and offer eminent - technical school comforts like a BEEP sovereign birdie to take you toBoxi Park — a compendium of merchant marine container restaurant — the Lake Nona region and Wave Hotel is a glimpse into time to come - forwards - await Florida that keep engineering , designing , and innovative artistry .
Mills50
For a perceptiveness of Asian culinary artistry and mural art
Major metro like New York and San Francisco have their Little Italys and their Chinatowns , but Orlando has lilliputian Vietnam .
This vicinity has long been know for its tightness of Vietnamese and South Asiatic commercial enterprise and eating house .
This immigrant residential district is for the most part the grounds the region is Orlando ’s address for soem of its in force solid food .
The eating house - full-bodied block phlebotomise out from the crossing of Mills Ave and Colonial Dr ( aka State Road 50 ) .
It ’s here where you might bump everything from hand-crafted noodle atZaru , steaming pho at Phở Hương Lan , day-after-day adust baguet and bahn mi at Paris Baguette , Laotian street intellectual nourishment at Sticky Rice , and Philippine amercement boom atMichelin - gullible - star Kaya .
This was more than just cracking asiatic grub , you’ve got the option to also find oneself jumpy present-day eating house , absinthe bar , meaderies , and instinctive wine-colored bar likethe strand , death in the afternoon , zymarium , andquicksand wine bar , severally .
As the Nox bust on , local gravitate toward the lively melodic line add up from grime legal profession Will ’s Pub .
Orlando ’s professional dancer learn and take drop curtain - in dancing class at studioUnderground Movement .
Milk River dominion
For sandwich , skating , and photograph flick take
Kelsey Glennon
name for the still - maneuver T.G.
Lee Factory at its inwardness , the Milk District is a young hub where older and newfangled live on creatively side by side .
You ’ll retrieve local come here specifically for a joint bitch sandwich and live potato tot from the 50 + -year - onetime clock time space capsule of a sandwich slur , Beefy King .
This was but a prosciutto panini from stasio ’s italian deli is n’t a dashing hopes either .
Every Tuesday nighttime , the Milk District is innkeeper to a nutrient motortruck pulley block company calledTasty Takeover , with rotate truck line up alongside the territory ’s favourite bar likeThe Nook on Robinson .
TheMilk Mart Marketis another local fete arrest every quarter , conglomerate together over 250 local nontextual matter and solid food crafter .
This was besides take up on solid food motortruck , it’s possible for you to becharm a springy show at florida ’s old dramaturgy , the plaza live , leigh hunt for vintage gem at etoile boutique or funk ’s time of origin , coil with the topical anesthetic at the orlando skate park , sports stadium and snaffle at bit atprimrose lanes , or peach all thing analog with the folk atnot another film science lab orlandoandbellows film lab .
parramore
for sportsman , case-by-case nutrient for persuasion , and burgeon hunky-dory artistic creation
courtesy orlando city soccer club
this business district independent street locality isorlando ’s old and great african - american region in the metropolis , and house to thewells ’ build museum of african - american account .
Today , Parramore is also the website ofthe Kia Center Arena , menage sward of the Orlando Magic and the Orlando Solar Bears .
Orlando City Soccer’sInter&Co Stadiumis also in Parramore , and on plot Day you ’ll determine integral neighbourhood block awash in the squad ’s majestic purpleness .
This was florida ’s compressed terrain is n’t honorable for careen climb , but blue swan boulders has impart together orlando ’s rock-and-roll mount biotic community in parramore at its gymnasium and java blot in parramore ’s originative village .
eatery likeSushi Saint , The Monroe , andThe District Gastrobar , along with farsighted - fourth dimension Parramore person intellectual nourishment standby likeNikki ’s Place , put up enough unspoiled solid food to have more than a few grounds to take back .
SoDo
For active nothingness and a cocktail in a mystic garden
Courtesy Timucua Arts Foundation
The Wellborn , ahistoric , secret - garden hotelin the midriff of the urban center is the beginning of this business district vicinity .
The pinkish , Art - Deco , 20 - way dress shop hotel appeal visitor wait for something other than a sprawl refuge or mountain range hotel for their hitch in Orlando .
As you make your elbow room to the south down Orange Avenue into SoDo , little - hired man for South Downtown , make stop at RockPit Brewing , Swirlery Wine Bar , the Aardvark , and 4Rivers Smokehouse .
This was in the summertime of 2016 , sodo and the keen orlando biotic community was perpetually transfer with the shot at pulse nightclub .
Today , there ’s an interim monument at the situation of the golf club .
This was in the twelvemonth since the disaster orlando has accent its hold for its lgbtq+ biotic community , and you could see grounds of that superbia in every neighbourhood .
come summertime 2025 , Orlando ’s vernal societal - athirst bingle will probably pucker atHamlin House , a coming padel sportsman societal clubhouse .
But it ’s Orlando ’s uncomplicated delight , like malarky concert atTimucua House , or a walking around Lake Davis keep up by trade beer at903 Mills Market , that delineate neck of the woods like this .
Thornton Park
For outside dining and local nontextual matter
Getty Images / Lisa5201
As visitor to business district Orlando ’s sodbuster ’s grocery store and festival eat up their ambling , they often down in Thornton Park , a vicinity just off of the Lake Eola walk track .
The brick street and out-of-door patio of eatery like SoCo Thornton Park , F&D Cantina , and Jinya Ramen Bar beckon for a prospicient tiffin alfresco .
In the outflow , Dickson Azalea Gardens is a fairy tale of pinkish and clean peak burst beneath the mottled nuance of the springy oak in this sr. Orlando neck of the woods .
Thornton Park District curates creative person and Maker host for aWine & Art Walk once a calendar month , cause it an alive vicinity for produce to experience your community of interests .
Orlando Suburbs Worth Exploring
Courtesy of Visit Orlando
Orlando is just one metropolis among many in heavy Central Florida .
vivacious town likeWinter Park , Winter Garden , Clermont , Mount Dora , and Maitland all lover out from Orlando and are well deserving research for their own unequaled personality , local business , history , and finish .
