A day out in beautiful Mount Dora

Published On: 13 Nov, 2024 07:32 PM

A small and very pretty little town to visit when you are in Central Florida is Mount Dora. It takes around an hour to drive there from the villa and it is a decent drive as you can go down the quieter 429 toll road instead of the I4. We have been three times now and have really enjoyed it each time.
We went on Sunday which is a good day to go as they have a farmers' market on that day with quite a lot of stalls selling different food (and having samples to try) as well things like jewellery and hand carved gifts.

Parking in the town centre was very hard though as it was busy due to the market and also, we didn’t get there until mid-day. After driving around the town for a few minutes we gave up trying to find a parking space and drove down instead to try and see if there were any spaces at Gilbert Park. As it turned out it was a really good move as there were lots of available spaces, parking was free and we also wanted to end our day down at Gilbert Park as there is a beautiful lakeside boardwalk trail.
What we hadn’t known until we parked up was that there is a free shuttle service to run people to and from the park up into wherever you want to be dropped off in town. The shuttles were like large golf buggies and can take up to 5 people. There are two or three such vehicles and as they couldn’t take all of us the driver rang for another shuttle which arrived a couple of minutes later to drive us all up to the restaurant we wanted to eat at. There is a sign in the car park with a QR code to download the shuttle app but we were fortunate in that we saw them driving past and just flagged them down without even using the app.

The town itself has many restaurants and coffee shops, all of which look very appealing. We choose Pisces Rising based upon the TripAdvisor reviews and the fact that it had outside dining and you could see the lake. There was also live music. We got a great table and the food was really nice, especially the cheesecake!

There are various different boat rides that you can take from the docks of Mount Dora as well as kayaking. We haven’t done any yet but will do in a future visit.
Afterwards we had a wander around the little boutique shops before heading down towards Gilbert Park.

On the way down we stopped at the historic Lakeside Inn for a coffee on their veranda, sat on white rocking chairs looking down towards the lake and it was a stop we would really recommend. We then set off again for Gilbert Park and were rather pleased when the shuttle spotted us and stopped for us to transport us to the start of the boardwalk trail. Sounds a bit lazy on our part but it saved about 15 minutes’ walk and time was of the essence as it was getting towards sunset and the boardwalk closes then.

If you do visit Mount Dora you would not want to miss going down to Gilbert Park. It is very pretty being right on the edge of the large lake and there is even a small red and white lighthouse. We really wanted to do the nature trail along the boardwalk though before it closed at sunset. It was an amazing time to do the walk as the sun was starting to set so we had beautiful colours in the sky. Within a couple of minutes of walking we spotted a large alligator in the water below us (but the boardwalk is a safe 10 feet or so above the water). The most incredible sight though was as we got to the end of the boardwalk we observed about 40 large turkey vultures coming into roost in the trees above our heads and could even hear them landing on the branches.
If you haven’t been to Mount Dora we would very much recommend that you try and find time to go. Not so much for younger children but definitely a great day out for adults.