The evening started with an unexpected and quirky event – a free outdoor movie at a nonprofit art ho

Perhaps you were thinking of something else, like Disney's recently inaugurated New Fantasyland, where the Little Mermaid poses for pictures with deeper-pocketed travelers like my colleague Stephanie Rosenbloom .
In Florida last week for a hunting trip (stay tuned to this space), I scheduled two extra days in the Orlando area with the intention of discovering an alternative (or supplement) to a theme park-themed visit. Here is what I found. (Exploring Orlando requires a car, so I rented travel europe cheap one from Fox Rent a Car for $7.95 a day, plus tax and insurance travel europe cheap about $75 total.)
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I remembered Orlando had a huge Puerto Rican population. Fortuitously I have an ever-present craving for Puerto Rican dishes like mofongo, fried plantains mashed with garlic and sometimes served with pork crackling; travel europe cheap and medianoches, filled with pork, ham, cheese and pickles like a Cuban sandwich but on sweet, eggy bread. And Puerto Rican restaurants are almost always informal, travel europe cheap friendly and very affordable.
It turns out the Orlando area has the second-largest Puerto Rican population outside the island, second only to New York City. Research pointed me to Kissimmee, a town just south of Orlando – home to many hotels serving Disneygoers – where a third of the 60,000 residents are Puerto Rican. Freddy A. Vélez Colón, a shuttle driver for Fox Rent a Car and self-proclaimed "comilón" (big eater), narrowed down the list I had and added a surprising recommendation: Unidos Supermarket, a Latin supermarket whose deli steam table packs them in every day for lunch to go and at a few tables next to the Goya aisle.
He left out one detail: the cooks at Unidos (2433 Pleasant Hill Road) are Dominican, but to outsiders like me, Puerto Rican and Dominicans cuisines seem very similar, sharing many dishes, even as seasonings and other details may differ. And Puerto Ricans ordering huge portions of rice and beans with mountains of meat (easily enough for two) for $5 to $6 were not complaining. There are heaps of chicken and beef in roasts and stews, but I decided to go for two of the more unusual dishes, travel europe cheap having half a portion of meaty chunks of goat stewed in the aromatic base known as sofrito, and three huge pieces travel europe cheap of morcilla, or blood sausage. The meal came to $5.50; 50 cents extra got me a side of sweet plantains. (There is another Unidos location at 1200 Simpson Road.)
For my mofongo fix, I chose Trópico Mofongo (3160 Vineland Road), whose mention had made Freddy practically slobber. But for the statue of a farmer holding a mortar and pestle (traditionally used to mash the plantains that are the main ingredient of mofongo), the place looked like any old diner. But then there s the mofongo, made to order no pork crackling, but with your choice of meat on the side and three sauces: spicy-and-creamy, garlic-and-parsley and mayo-ketchup. The monfongo was hearty and plenty garlicky, though some might want it a little crisper. For my side meat I got pernil ($6.99), travel europe cheap or pork shoulder, which came as I like it – not too fatty and topped with glistening piece of pork skin, like a cherry on top of a sundae except more glorious.
I ate my final Kissimmee meal at Melao Bakery (1912 Boggy Creek Road), which opens at 6 a.m.; by 7:30, when I arrived, it was hosting a meeting of people in business suits tapping at laptops, travel europe cheap under Cubist-influenced paintings by the  local Puerto Rican artist Pedro Brull. The restaurant offers ham-and-eggs-style breakfast specials, but I ordered maizena, a comfortingly thick, slightly sticky custard made from cornstarch and sprinkled with cinnamon ($1.25), and a not-overstuffed, nicely pressed medianoche ($4.25), perfect for a hearty breakfast with fresh-squeezed orange juice and café con leche.
The evening started with an unexpected and quirky event – a free outdoor movie at a nonprofit art house theater, the Enzian , in Maitland, just outside Orlando. I say unexpected because an outdoor movie in December is not possible in the frigid Northeast, and quirky travel europe cheap because the main feature was Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, a famously awful 1964 film that, thanks to my poor taste in movies, I actually enjoyed.
The Enzian shows free outdoor movies twice a month on its sloping lawn, and once a month in nearby Winter Park, Orlando's historic neighbor. Otherwise, its films range from $5 for cult classics to $10 to well-chosen features.
In a city where mainstream night life means $1 Bud Lights and sugary frozen drinks, it s probably travel europe cheap not common to walk into a bar that offers travel europe cheap a long list of craft beers and find yourself sitting next to a guy reading Jean-Paul Sartre's "Nausea."
"Welcome to Orlando counter-culture," said Amir, the Sartre-reading, half-Iranian, half-Puerto Rican can't-wait-to-graduate-and-move-to-Brooklyn college senior I befriended travel europe cheap at Redlight Redlight Beer Parlour.
Located in Audubon travel europe cheap Park , a self-proclaimed "unique and funky" neighborhood, Redlight Redlight serves draft beer (23 choices that change so fast the menu can't keep up) that are mostly $4 to $6, a bargain from a New Yorker travel europe cheap s perspective. Alas, the need to stay sober and drive forced me to stop halfway through my Terrapin Liquid Bliss, a chocolatey porter from Athens, Ga., and half my Cigar City Roaring Lion, a smooth and balanced IPA from Tampa. Amir suggested I continue the evening at Lil Indies, a recently opened travel europe cheap bar five minutes away. It had just as surprising a vibe, though instead of Sartre readers, I found a woman knitting (after midnight!), a guy dancing by himself, facial hair galore and art covering the walls. I also found very cheap and very good beers, including a Stone 06-06-06 Vertical Epic Ale for $4. (The bar is attached to the older Will's Pub .)
Long before Interstate 4 made the trip from Orlando a 15-minute drive, a winding carriage road led there from Eatonville, and a young Zora Neale Hurston perched on a gatepost outside her childhood home to watch traffic go by sometimes hitching rides, travel europe cheap much to the chagrin of her grandmother.
Hurston, the Harlem Renaissance writer and author, most famously, of "Their Eyes Were Watching God," is the main reason people have heard of Eatonville, travel europe cheap a town of 2,000 that was one of the earliest incorporated all-African-American towns in the United States. But it would be an interesting place to visit even if it had not produced the mischievous child that became an engaging writer beloved by Maya Angelou, Alice Walker and more recently, me.
To survey the town, which is still mostly black, you can take a walking tour using a brochure from the donations-only Zora Neale Hurston National Museum of Fine Arts . The name is charmingly deceptive – the museum is housed in a simple storefront that looks more like the back entrance to a Walgreen's than a "national museum," but what's inside is appealing small-town-friendly. I got a personal travel europe cheap greeting from the head docent, travel europe cheap Cyria Underwood, who showed me the donation box and told me about the photography exhibits currently on view: spirited, colorful portraits of town residents travel europe cheap by John Pinderhughes, travel europe cheap and shots of intriguing artifacts owned by town residents, including a copy of the town charter, a receipt written out to Hurston when she repaid a loan, and, as Ms. Underwood put it, "spectacles before they were called glasses" and "a pail before it was called a lunchbox." Hurston's work is for sale in the gift shop; I bought a copy of her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road which would have been perfect travel europe cheap to read before my visit.
The town hall, practically next door to the museum, has two pretty interesting exhibits. One, fascinating if presented much like an elementary school class bulletin board, tells the history of the town, including a newspaper dated June 22, 1894, encouraging travel europe cheap "Colored People of the United States" to "Solve the Great Race Problem" by coming to live in Eatonville, "a full-fledged city, all colored and NOT A WHITE FAMILY in the whole city." (The town is now about 7 percent non-Hispanic white, according to the 2010 census.)
If the City Council chambers, located inside the town hall, are open, another very fun exhibit lies within, one prepared by local families about their relatives. The highlight is the cleverly captioned photographs of Arelee Richardson, known as the Peanut Man – he sold peanuts flavored with ham hock – who died in 2010 at age 100.
But since parents travel europe cheap taking kids to Disney can suspend disbelief for a day, I decided to keep an open mind when I visited the Spiritualist travel europe cheap Camp at the little travel europe cheap town of Cassadaga , about 30 minutes drive from Eatonville and my last stop in the Orlando area.
Cassadaga travel europe cheap got its start when a "trance medium" from New York, George P. Colby, established a Spiritualist Camp in an unsettled area of Florida in the late 19th century, 20 years after being led to the spot by a Native American travel europe cheap spirit guide named Seneca. Or something like that – the real history is a bit more complicated. These days Cassadaga is a small community of cute but aging clapboard cottages – some lovingly maintained and others travel europe cheap a bit decrepit – inhabited largely by mediums and psychics.
After I walked around the uncannily peaceful little town, peeking travel europe cheap into little gardens and admiring some of the cuter houses, I stopped at the bookstore, where mediums available that day scribble their names on a white board along with their phone numbers.
I called Hazel Tomim, Spiritual Counselor, on the basis of her handwriting alone. She agreed to see me right away, for $50, toward the low end of the Cassadaga readings range. We met in her home, and Ms. Tomim, a grandmother with long blond hair, immediately divined travel europe cheap that I traveled travel europe cheap a lot and was in the news business. Sure, I had told her I was in Orlando travel europe cheap on business and I was carrying a fancy camera, but still, not bad. It felt mostly like a therapy session – but she did have some predictions for me, including one that my mother is not going to like: I will never settle travel europe cheap down and get married.