We visited The Villages near Wildwood, Florida. It is a huge retirement community geared towards retirees with an active lifestyle. It is also a golf-cart community where people don’t need to drive their cars very often, as The Villages are self contained with everything from restaurants and movie theatres to state of the art hospitals and of course, what it is famous for, it’s theme park-esque flavor. Imagine Epcot at Disney. Now imagine that instead of having China, Norway or Italy that they have “American Retirement Village”. This is The Villages. It is where people who live in central FL (and not necessarily at the Villages) can go to eat at a nice restaurant, play golf and listen to an outdoor concert where it is always happy hour.
Roberto, my mom and I decided to go to Lake Sumter Landing. It is an entertainment center of The Villages community to look like a wharf. There is a boardwalk, boats in the marina that never go anywhere, and a lot of the buildings, not matter what they housed, look like fish shacks. If you close your eyes and pretend that you are actually at a wharf, you can believe it.
We had a really great lunch at RJ Gators. It is a chain restaurant here in FL, where the menu is tropical. We all started off with Mojitos – mango and pineapple. Both were very good, but way too pricey, $7.50 each! Roberto and I shared a “Banana Havana Shrimp”. It was grilled rosemary shrimp served with fried plantains, black beans and key lime infused sour cream. It was delicious. We also had fried onion strings with a spicy sauce. It was so much food that we even brought some home! My mom had the Cubano Salmon. It was grilled salmon topped with a rum sugar glaze. It was served with a fresh tropical fruit salad and mashed sweet potatoes with pineapple. Each meal was under $13. Well worth the price as the food was very original and fresh. Perfect for a beautiful FL afternoon!
After lunch we took a walk around the square and looked at all the shops. They had everything from a spa, to a movie theatre, to a dog specialty store. They also had lots of clothing and jewelry boutiques which were fun to look at, as well as a replica of an old country store full of gourmet foods, high end bath goods and clothes.
After our walk we went to Haagen Dazs for an ice cream treat. I had a wonderful dulce de leche milkshake and Roberto had a strawberry sorbet sipper. You just can’t ever go wrong with Haagen Dazs shakes! My mom was good and had water as she is observing Lent.
After our sweet treat and a relaxing sit on comfy chairs by the “wharf” we were ready to get back to the reality of our Central Florida. But I am sure we will be back to The Villages because personally, I like a place where happy hour never ends!
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