Orlando

Orlando is inland, and the nearest sea is about an hour's drive east. Cocoa Beach and New Smyrna Beach are long, wide Atlantic strands with soft sand and gentle surf, and the water reaches about 28°C in summer, cooling to about 20°C in winter. The Gulf beaches around Clearwater, with calmer and clearer water, are closer to two hours away. For most visitors the coast is one day out in a week built around the parks, and the swimming they do day to day happens in hotel pools and the big water parks. Anyone who wants beach life every day should stay on the coast instead.

Most visitors eat among chain restaurants, park counters and themed dining, and that sets the tone of a stay. Inside the parks, Epcot's World Showcase is the most interesting place to graze, with a pavilion for each country. Florida itself offers little in the way of a distinctive cuisine beyond citrus, Gulf seafood and Cuban sandwiches.

Away from the tourist corridors the city eats better than its reputation suggests. The Mills 50 district has a strong run of Vietnamese and other Asian kitchens. Winter Park, Thornton Park and Audubon Park have chef-led restaurants and farmers' markets, and Sand Lake Road holds the steak and seafood rooms. To reach any of it, you will usually have to drive.

Orlando grew up around citrus groves and then theme parks, and it has little old architecture or landmark heritage. The best cultural sight is in Winter Park: the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art holds the largest collection of Louis Comfort Tiffany's work anywhere, including the chapel interior he made for the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. The Orlando Museum of Art and the small Mennello Museum in Loch Haven Park, and the Orange County Regional History Center downtown, fill a slow afternoon. The space programme's heritage is real, but it lies on the coast. Visitors who plan around museums and historic streets will find little here.

Going out splits into two worlds. The resort districts, Disney Springs and Universal's CityWalk, offer themed bars and a few dance floors that are easy, safe and aimed at visitors staying nearby, and they mostly quieten earlier than a big city would. Downtown along Orange Avenue and around Church Street and Wall Street Plaza, a younger local crowd, boosted by a large university, fills bars and clubs late on weekends, with gay bars and a relaxed scene in the Ivanhoe Village and Mills 50 areas. It is a reasonable night out, but the days in the parks start early and most families and couples are in bed long before it gets going.

Central Florida is flat, and its landscape is water: lakes, slow rivers, cypress swamps and crystal-clear springs. Wekiwa Springs is within a short drive for kayaking and woodland trails, and Blue Spring draws manatees in winter. Airboats run across the Kissimmee headwaters past alligators and wading birds. Towards the coast, the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge and Canaveral National Seashore are among the best birdwatching areas in the state, with lagoons and empty dunes. Cycling is easy on long paved rail trails. There are no hills to climb, summer heat and afternoon thunderstorms push activity to early mornings, and the best outdoor season runs from November to April.

The standout day out is the Kennedy Space Center on the coast, about an hour away, where launch pads, the Saturn V and the shuttle Atlantis are on show, and a rocket launch is sometimes visible across the water. St Augustine, the oldest continuously settled European town in the United States, with its Spanish fort and old streets, is just under two hours north. To the west, Tampa's Ybor City cigar district and St Petersburg's Dalí Museum make a full day, at a similar distance. Closer in, the lakeside town of Mount Dora and the antique shops of DeLand are gentler outings. Almost everything needs a car.

No city in the world is built more completely around children. Walt Disney World alone has four theme parks and two water parks, with resorts, buses and boats designed so that families never have to leave. Universal Orlando adds its own parks and immersive film worlds for older children and teenagers, SeaWorld combines marine animals and roller coasters, and Legoland Florida in Winter Haven suits younger children. Beyond the parks there are huge pool resorts, dinner shows, mini-golf and science centres.

Everything is geared to families, from character breakfasts and stroller rental to hotel suites with bunk rooms. The challenges are summer heat, long queues and the sheer scale, which rewards planning and a few rest days by the pool.

Orlando is a city of highways, and a car is close to essential. The parks, hotel zones, the airport and downtown sit many miles apart along Interstate 4 and its toll roads, and pavements and crossings are not designed for walking between them. Public buses exist but are slow and rarely useful for visitors. The exceptions are inside the resorts: Disney runs its own monorail, boats, buses and gondolas between parks and hotels, and Universal's hotels connect to its parks on foot and by water taxi, so a family staying on-site can manage without a car. The Brightline train links the airport with Miami. Traffic around the parks is heavy at peak times.

Orlando shops in malls and outlets, and for many international visitors that is a real reason to come. Two large premium outlet centres, on International Drive and Vineland Avenue, sell American and designer brands, and the Mall at Millenia gathers the luxury labels under one roof. Disney Springs and CityWalk combine park merchandise with brand stores. For something with more character, Park Avenue in Winter Park is a pleasant tree-lined street of boutiques and galleries. What is missing is independent design, traditional markets and local crafts. The shopping is about brands and prices, not discovery.

Orlando has a huge supply of hotel rooms, and away from the parks along International Drive and in Kissimmee they are fairly priced for the United States, with self-catering condos and villas popular with families. The real cost lies elsewhere. Theme-park tickets are the main sight and are expensive, especially over several days, and the extras add up quickly: hire cars, parking, express queue passes, meals inside the parks and tips on top of restaurant bills. Eating away from the resorts and at casual chains helps. On-site resort hotels cost noticeably more than staying off-site, and school-vacation weeks push prices up across the board.

Downtown's Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts is the main stage, taking touring Broadway productions and hosting the Orlando Philharmonic, and Orlando Shakespeare Theater plays in Loch Haven Park. The Orlando Fringe, one of the longest-running fringe festivals in the country, fills the spring with small productions. Many visitors' main experience of performance comes from inside the resorts: theatre-scale stage shows in the parks, a resident acrobatic show at Disney Springs, dinner shows and fireworks spectaculars. They are polished and fun but not a live-music or theatre culture in their own right. Jazz and band venues are modest and mostly local.

Orlando has no bathing tradition, and a typical stay is anything but restful: early starts, long queues, heat and miles of walking in the parks. What it does have is a large number of resort hotels with full spas, lazy rivers and landscaped pool areas, many around Lake Buena Vista and the Disney and Universal resorts, so a pool day or a massage between park days is easy to arrange. Couples looking for calm do better in Winter Park, with its tree-lined streets, lakes and slower pace. The city works as a place to recover from the parks, not one to choose for rest.