Florida Guide > Other Activities
A visit to Celebration
Something that we do on most of our visits to the Disney area is to spend a half day visiting the Disney Celebration community. If you are in the general area of the Disney Main Entrance on Route 192 then you are only a short distance away from this hidden treasure. The community was first envisaged as an old style American town where everybody could sit on their porch and know all their neighbours. It may have started out that way but it has now grown bigger an evolved into a more complete town that caters for the daily influx of visitors as well as maintaining its original theme and design.
When you first approach the town do not make the mistake of going straight into the centre to park. If you turn left as you start to come up to the main town you can park for free under the shade of some tress by a long thin lake that looks like a small river. Along this grows a number of interesting plants and flowers that are well worth a look if as they have tries to recreate a typical river bank.
The casual visitor to Celebration will only be interested in two streets which form a T. If you park where I have suggested then you will walk into the central area with a lake to your left and on the right will be shops and restaurants. When you get to the main crossroads then you have further shops to both the left and right.
The locations along these two streets mostly break down into three categories; restaurants, refreshments and shops. The shops mostly sell a variety of goods which you can use to add accents to your own home or use for different presents for friends and relations. There are two places where you can get a ‘soup and sandwich’ type meal at a very reasonable cost, one ‘English’ tea room and the standard must have Coffee shop. The tea room is run by an English couple who moved to Florida and has been featured on UK TV programs. I personally prefer the ‘Barnie’s’ Coffee shop which has a excellent range of coffee’s available and always has about 4 specials ready for you to try. The shop does have a shaded courtyard out the front where you can sit and drink your purchase. However I prefer to leave the shop and walk down towards the hotel on the lake side. You can walk round the side of the hotel and then follow the footpath all the way round the lake. There are benches where you can sit down all around this path and it is nice to relax on the opposite side while you enjoy your drink.
When you look back over the lake you can see the area that a lot of people stop at. This is opposite the cinema and has a dancing water fountain that children can play in and wooden rocking chairs where you can sit and watch the town go by. When we return from our walk around the lake it is normally for a late afternoon lunch. The town can cater for just about all tastes with Cuban Italian and American style restaurants to name only three. Many of these are reviewed in other Florida guides, so I will just say that our own favourite is the Cuban one called Columbia. It has a very pleasant outside eating area which has views across the park and makes its own special Sangria at your table side which in itself makes the visit worthwhile.
If you have older children that you are dropping off at one of the parks then you could do a lot worse than spend some time here and then have a late lunch before you return to collect them.
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