Orlando For Grown-Ups

Of all the cities in Florida, Orlando has endured the bumpiest ride on the road to adulthood. Those awkward adolescent years-starting with Walt Disney's epic 1965 land grab and the growth pains that followed-put the city through a real identity crisis. What did Orlando want to be when it finally grew up? The Gateway to Theme Park World? Or Atlanta Lite?

Happily, it's neither. While there's no ignoring those 500-pound gorillas hunkered down on the outskirts of town-Universal Studios, Sea World and Walt Disney World-the mega-masses typically keep their distance from downtown Orlando, which offers plenty of grown-up diversions and none of the fanny-pack, tank-top crowds. With boutique hotels and historic inns, brick streets and oak-shrouded neighborhoods, an evolving array of homegrown restaurants and a vibrant music, theater and festival scene, Orlando has matured into a bona-fide city, a destination with a character all its own, not just a series of exits on I-4 leading to the Land of Daily Admission Prices.

The key to savoring Orlando beyond the theme parks is simple: Look for the lakes. Although Florida's largest landlocked city might fall short when it comes to gorgeous beaches (hey, it's only an hour's drive to the Atlantic), it's long on freshwater attractions. Between them, Orlando and neighboring Winter Park claim more than 100 lakes within their city limits, many of them connected by natural tributaries or narrow canals cut by 19th-century loggers. Although most of the lakes are rimmed with homes and towering cypress trees (the homes often seeming to out-tower the trees), some lakes are dedicated to public recreation-waterskiing and wakeboarding, kayaking and competitive rowing-and many offer surprisingly good fishing (a friend of mine reeled in a nine-pound bass within earshot of Orlando City Hall just a couple of years ago).

At the heart of Orlando sits Lake Eola Park, a 20-acre urban escape which, along with the neighborhoods around it, has sparked downtown's 21st-century revival. A monument at one end of the lake honors the person believed to be the city's namesake-Orlando Reeves, a soldier killed in a nearby 1854 skirmish during the Seminole Indian Wars. Some people maintain, however, that a well-to-do settler christened Orlando after a character in Shakespeare's As You Like It. The latter theory dovetails serendipitously with one of the city's stellar events-the Orlando-University of Central Florida Shakespeare Festival which, for six weeks each spring, takes to the stage in the park's 950-seat amphitheater. No sooner has the curtain dropped on the Bard than the giddy Orlando International Fringe Festival launches its annual 10-day run. It's modeled after a similar alternative-theater fest in Edinburgh, Scotland, and fringe performers come from around the world to hit the boards at a variety of places around downtown-everywhere from empty storefronts and bars to street corners and makeshift stages.

As a kid back in the 1950s, I used to visit Lake Eola for Sunday-after-church lunch and a chance to look at The Flying Saucer, the giant, otherworldly fountain that graced the middle of the lake. Now, I'm more inclined to visit Lake Eola Park at night. Not only has The Flying Saucer been gussied up to dazzle with a multicolored light show (for $7 you can rent a pedal-powered "giant swan boat" to navigate the lake on your own); more up-tempo pursuits lie within easy walking distance. The one-mile footpath around Lake Eola skirts Thornton Park, a newly gentrified neighborhood boasting some of the city's best restaurants, including Hue, which draws especially big crowds for its over-the-top disco brunches. Across the street, the ribs and pulled pork at Wildfire's Bar and Grill get my five-napkin rating for succulent messiness.

Downtown's main drag, Orange Avenue, runs just two blocks west of Lake Eola; after the bankers and attorneys check out for the day, it becomes home to a kinetic nightclub scene. While it is inescapably, if not regrettably, true that some of these clubs have served as Petri dishes for a number of homogenized pop acts-'N-Sync and the Backstreet Boys are among the groups that were launched in Orlando-a typical night serves up wide-ranging and eclectic fare.

In the past, if a new hotel sprouted in Orlando, you could be sure it was out by the theme parks. But recent years have brought an increasing number of new accommodations to downtown, most notably the 250-room Westin Grand Bohemian Hotel. Its Bosendorfer Lounge (named after the Imperial Grand Bosendorfer piano that graces the lounge's rotunda) provides an elegant hangout for the jazz crowd. And I've cultivated a fondness for its signature drink, the Impressionist martini, which pays homage to the hotel's impressive art collection.

"People walk in here and say, 'Whoa, this is Orlando?' It's edgy and urban," says Tom MacKeller, a bartender at the Bosendorfer. "It's a lot more New York or Chicago than Florida."

For those looking to bunk down in surroundings with a sense of place, there's The Courtyard at Lake Lucerne, just a few blocks south of Lake Eola Park. This cluster of four lovingly renovated buildings, which now serve as B & Bs, includes the Norment-Parry Inn (Orlando's oldest house, circa 1883) and The Wellborn, a 1940s-era former apartment building that's a funky tribute to Florida's art-deco heritage.

Downtown Orlando blends more or less seamlessly into Winter Park, passing through Antique Row, an eight-block stretch of furniture stores, vintage shops and restaurants nestled near the shore of Lake Ivanhoe. While Winter Park has often been called a bit of New England plopped down in Florida, it's really just a small Southern town, albeit an affluent one that dates back to the 1850s.

In a region otherwise beset by monster malls and discount outlets, Park Avenue offers high-end shopping along brick streets shaded by moss-draped trees. Rollins College, the 2,000-student liberal arts school that anchors the south end of the avenue, is home to the Cornell Fine Arts Museum, the oldest collection in Florida. At the other end of Park Avenue, the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art boasts the world's most comprehensive collection of the works of Louis Comfort Tiffany. For those who think Tiffany just dabbled in fancy lampshades and stained-glass windows, the Morse museum provides a stunning eye-opener to the man's vision and diverse talents, not only as an artist but as an architect and interior designer. The museum's centerpiece is the Byzantine-Romanesque-style chapel that won Tiffany his earliest acclaim after he designed it for the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago and which has been re-created piece-by-piece here. Tiffany's work fell out of favor after the 1920s. The museum's founders, Hugh and Jeannette McKean, rescued much of the collection after a 1957 fire destroyed Tiffany's New York estate. The museum also draws acclaim for its special attention to American art from the Civil War to World War I.

From the Morse Museum it's just a short step off Park Avenue to Lake Osceola, where you'll find the best way to cover the local lakefront-on one of the 18-passenger pontoon boats run by Winter Park Scenic Boat Tours. In addition to offering a back-yard glimpse of spectacular homes, the one-hour tour ($8 for adults, $4 for children) winds through a watery habitat where the wood storks, ibises and alligators are amazingly more lifelike than the ones populating those jungle cruises out in the tourist zone.

Lodging beyond Disney

Orlando's best B&B is The Courtyard at Lake Lucerne, 211 N. Lucerne Circle E., Orlando, FL 32801; (800) 444-5289; Web site address: www.orlandohistoricinn.com.

Sitting near the east shore of Lake Eola is the EO Inn and Urban Spa, 227 N. Eola Drive, Orlando, FL 32801; (407) 481-8485, www.eoinn.com.

The Park Plaza Hotel offers balcony rooms above Winter Park's Park Avenue: 307 Park Ave. S., Winter Park, FL 32789; (407) 647-1072.