Orlando holidays

Land-locked Orlando is around 40 miles from Florida’s Atlantic coast and 80 miles from the Gulf coast, so it takes at least an hour to get to a beach. But the strips of sand in this part of the world make the journey worth your while. To the east of Orlando, you’ve got Cocoa and Daytona Beach, where the sands roll out as far as the eye can see. To the west, there’s Clearwater and St Pete Beach, where the facilities lists fall into the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink categories.

Daytona Beach is a supersized strip of sand. It’s 23 miles long and hotel-linen white. If you’ve hired a car for the day, this beach rewards drivers with a car parking space on dedicated parts of the sand. From mid-May to the end of October, there’s an extra incentive to visit. These months are sea turtle season in Daytona and they see hundreds of endangered turtles shuffling ashore to lay their eggs in the sand.

You can buy designer labels and come away with change in Orlando. At Premium Outlets on Vineland Avenue, 15 minutes from International Drive, you can pick up Calvin Klein, Burberry, Prada and Robert Cavalli for a fraction of the recommended retail price. There’s a big village of outlet stores at S Apopka Vineland Road, in Lake Buena Vista, too. The stores include Gap, Tommy Hilfiger, Nine West and Crocs.

Orlando is shopaholic country. Festival Bay Mall alone features 900,000 square foot of shopping space. If it’s high street brands you’re after, head to Florida Mall on the Orange Blossom Trail. Macy’s department store, Abercrombie and Fitch, and Oakley are just a few of more than a hundred big-name brands here. If you can’t tear yourself from Orlando’s theme parks, you can shop on site. At the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World Resort there’s a list of shopping opportunities as long as your arm. Try the Agrabaar Bazaar in Adventureland or Big Al’s in Frontierland for all types of Disney-themed merchandise

When it comes to designer labels, Orlando’s shops put more than their two cents in. Head to The Mall at Millenia on Conroy Road to find labels like Gucci and Tiffany and Co, or make your way to Pointe Orlando on International Drive to browse the rails at Armani. If you’d rather dress your home than yourself, try Lanier’s Historic Market Place on Broadway, Kissimmee. This 18,000 square foot showroom is crammed with antiques.

Family fun is served up in big portions in the Orlando area. Universal City Walk alone offers 30 acres of entertainment. The complex is home to the largest Hard Rock Café in the world, it’s got a 20-screen IMAX, and it’s full of theatres where you can watch cutting-edge shows. Downtown Disney offers a similar selection of things to see and do – one of the highlights is the Cirque du Soleil show. If you want a quiet night in Kissimmee, take the family to the Old Town entertainment complex. It’s a one-stop-shop for amusements, restaurants and live music bars.

The list of bars and clubs in the Orlando area reads like a register. International Drive is a great starting point. There are hundreds of options here, including an ice bar and a comedy club. Away from this nightlife nucleus, Church Street in Orlando city centre is home to a club designed by Paris Hilton and a bar that specialises in frozen cocktails, and Pine Street is a hot spot for dance clubs.

You need all hands on deck to eat Florida stone crab, which is found in the western North Atlantic. The cooked claws of the crab are served with a mallet, which you use to bash open the shells. Once you’ve extracted the meat, it’s customary to dunk it into a side of mustard sauce.

This robust soup rivals a Picasso painting in terms of colour. It’s made with tomatoes, peppers, carrots, limes, parsley, white wine and conch meat, and the end result is a bright apricot colour. Some restaurants increase the heat of the dish by adding chilli flakes.

Golf ball-shaped Key limes grow all over the Florida Keys. These fruits are more tart and aromatic than the Persian limes you get in your gin and tonics. To make a Key lime pie, the juice is combined with cream and milk and the mixture is spread over a sweet biscuit base.

This sticky syrup is produced in Florida’s panhandle. The amber-coloured honey is made by bees, which collect the nectar from the tupelo tree. Tupelo honey is ambidextrous when it comes to culinary uses. It can be simply spread on toast, used as a sauce for chicken wings, or baked into cakes.

Orange juice became the official state beverage of Florida in 1967. Florida provides 80 per cent of America’s orange juice, and the country is second only to Brazil in the amount of the zesty stuff it produces every year. The brand Florida’s Natural carries particular weight in the industry, because it only uses oranges grown in Florida.