Shopping
Shopping in Orlando is truly world class, with every kind of retail outlet known to man, from flea markets to tourist traps to magnificent designer-label malls. The discount outlet shopping plazas are particularly common here and boast some of the best value. However, they are spread out far and wide and there is no central shopping area as such, although the 6 mile (10km) length of International Drive comes closest to being a shopping area as it is home to numerous plazas of the gift shop variety, plus two tourist-orientated shopping and dining centres, The Mercado and Pointe Orlando, which both offer some one-of-a-kind shops and restaurants.
The essential shopping venues, though, would be the Orlando Premium Outlets (8200 Vineland Avenue, just off International Drive), for a good range of big-name brands at discount prices; Lake Buena Vista Factory Stores (15767 South Apopka-Vineland Road) for an equally tempting range price-wise; Belz Factory Outlet World (5401 West Oak Ridge Road at the top of International Drive) for more of the same; the huge Florida Mall (8001 South Orange Blossom Trail), Orlando’s largest mall; Mall at Millenia (4200 Conroy Road, just off motorway I-4), which is the newest and smartest mall in Florida; and Festival Bay (5250 International Drive), an entertainment centre with restaurants, mini-golf, skate-boarding and cinemas, plus some good one-off shops. Individual shops worth looking out for are the eclectic art world of Hoy Poloi (in Downtown Disney’s West Side) and Auke Hempenius (316 North Park Avenue in Winter Park, a northern Orlando suburb) which stocks some of the finest Italian designer menswear in the US.
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