Hello From Orlando – Part 5: The Winter Park Scenic Boat Tour
The Winter Park Scenic Boat Tour, founded in 1938 and located just 15 minutes north of downtown Orlando, is one of these lovely side trips that combine beautiful scenery, a bit of local history, some close-up exposure to local wildlife and vegetation with a relaxing outing in a slow-moving 18-passenger pontoon boat, all complete with expert (and sometimes humorous) narration provided by the boat’s captain.
The tour takes you through 3 lakes: Lake Osceola, Lage Virginia and Lake Maitland. On this gorgeous day, with brilliantly blue skies, the boat whisked us past hundreds of beautiful water-front estates, many of which were originally built in the 1920s and originally sold for $20,000, while fetching between $500,000 and several million in today’s booming Central Florida real estate market. Even boathouses are worth between $30,000 and $40,000.
In Lake Virginia we came up close to the grounds of Rollins College, one of the top rated private liberal arts colleges in the South Eastern United States, founded in 1885 by New England Congregationalists. Rollins College is the oldest...