Orlando Layover: ICON Park and Lake Eola, MCO

Orlando’s two layover options pull in opposite directions: a 400-foot observation wheel and an aquarium on International Drive, or downtown’s Lake Eola, where the fountain, the swan-boat dock and a 1927 courthouse full of local history sit a few blocks apart.

The observation wheel at ICON Park on International Drive

The Wheel at ICON Park carries thirty enclosed capsules, fifteen people to a capsule, 400 feet up and back down in about twenty minutes. The capsules are air-conditioned, which is not a small detail in an Orlando July. You can book a ticket ahead instead of queueing at the booth.

The ground level underneath runs to an aquarium and a wax museum, both indoors and both open into the evening. The SEA LIFE aquarium is the one to know about when a storm parks itself over the strip, which it does most summer afternoons. A trolley works the length of International Drive from eight in the morning until half past ten at night, every fifteen to twenty minutes, $2 a ride in exact change.

The fountain and swan boats on Lake Eola

Lake Eola Park is 23 acres of downtown Orlando wrapped around a lake, open from six in the morning until midnight, with a 0.9-mile sidewalk running all the way round the water. The Linton E. Allen Memorial Fountain stands out in the middle of it and lights up after dark. Pedal swan boats go out from the dock at the north end for $15 per half hour, up to five people a boat, no reservation, cash or card.

More than fifty live swans share the water with the boats, in five breeds: mute, whooper, trumpeter, black-necked and Australian black. Every November the city corrals the whole flock at the west end of the park, sets up a temporary clinic and puts each bird through a weigh-in, a vet check and a microchip scan. On Sundays between ten and three the farmers market takes over the lakeside path, and there is a playground on the east side.

None of Orlando’s layover stops are within walking distance of each other, so a suitcase rides every bus, trolley and train leg of the day with you.

The Orange County Regional History Center inside a 1927 courthouse

Orange County dedicated its neoclassical courthouse at 65 East Central Boulevard in October 1927, a few blocks west of Lake Eola, and the building now holds the county’s history museum. Adult admission is $10. The galleries open Monday to Saturday from ten until five, and Sundays from noon until five.

Upstairs, the museum kept Courtroom B as a wood-panelled courtroom rather than converting it into gallery space. A rape trial heard in that room in 1987 produced the first conviction in the United States won on DNA evidence.

The Tiffany chapel inside Winter Park’s Morse Museum

Louis Comfort Tiffany built an entire chapel interior for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and it stands reassembled at 445 North Park Avenue in Winter Park, open to the public since April 1999. The museum around it holds the most comprehensive collection of Tiffany’s work anywhere. Adult admission is $8, seniors $7, students $3 and under-12s nothing, and from November through April the museum waives the charge altogether on Friday evenings between four and eight.

Park Avenue outside is laid in brick and shaded by oaks, and the commuter train from downtown drops you two blocks off it for $2, both stations being inside the same county. That train runs on weekdays only, so this is a Monday-to-Friday idea rather than a weekend one. With five hours or more to spend, the narrated lake tour that has run out of Winter Park since 1938 is the other reason to come up here: an hour across three of the town’s lakes and through two man-made canals, $20 for adults and $10 for children aged two to eleven.

Anyone who would rather have the ticketed stops settled before landing can line them up on a tours and activities platform.

The airport bus runs every half hour, and hourly on Sundays

LYNX Link 11 connects Lynx Central Station, at 455 North Garland Avenue on the north edge of downtown, with Orlando International Airport (MCO): about 45 minutes, a flat $2, and a transfer good for 90 minutes. From International Drive, Link 42 covers the same trip in around an hour. Buses pull in at the ground transportation level of Terminal A, so a flight out of Terminal C means one more leg on the automated Terminal Link people mover between the two landside buildings. The free LYMMO circulator will carry you from Lake Eola up to the station first, and a car does the whole run in about 20 minutes if the bus timetable does not suit. Leave downtown two and a half hours before departure and none of it is tight.

The station attached to Terminal C is also where Brightline’s southbound trains leave from, which is how plenty of people arrive in Orlando from Miami in the first place.

Whichever side of town you pick, the suitcase does not have to come with you. Left at a storage point for the afternoon, a bus ride, a trolley and a walk around a lake read as an afternoon out rather than an errand with luggage attached.