I was lucky enough to have two places to call home growing up. The first, my childhood home, where my family still lives to this day. The second, my grandparents’ house.
My grandparents live in a quaint little town in Central Florida called Celebration. Located about ten minutes away from Walt Disney World, the town was developed in the late 1990s by the Walt Disney Company as a planned community.
While Celebration may be considered a “tourist destination” nowadays, thanks to the growing number of people traveling to and from the Most Magical Place on Earth who have discovered it in recent years, to me it will always be my own little slice of heaven.
The entire community has a very small-town, nostalgic feel to it. It feels like a town straight out of a movie. There are a multitude of different beautiful architecture styles wherever you look, yet it all is very uniform and works seamlessly together.
My grandparents have lived in Celebration my whole life, so I basically grew up there. Most of my big milestones, first steps, losing my first tooth, first time driving, finding out I got accepted into college, all happened in Celebration. I think I have more childhood pictures taken there than I do back home.
This past winter break, as I do every year, I got to go back down to my second home and spend two weeks in my favorite place on earth. From window shopping in the beautiful downtown area to watching the sunset over the pond in my grandparents’ backyard from the patio, everything just hits differently there.
There are also some perks that come with Celebration being so close to Disney World. Disney Springs is just a short drive away, opening up a larger variety of restaurants and stores to hit up when we want to try something new.
Being in Central Florida also has its perks too, whenever the Kennedy Space Center has a rocket launch you can often see them from my grandparents’ driveway.
One of my all-time favorite things to do when I’m down there is to take a walk downtown with my mom on Sunday mornings, grab breakfast from the local deli, browse the local farmers market, and then get coffee and sitting down by the water. It is one of the most peaceful and relaxing ways to spend your mornings.
As life gets busier and the breaks between visits grow longer, Celebration remains a constant in my life. It’s the place that watched me grow up and continues to welcome me back, no matter how much I’ve changed. To me, it will always be my second home. A reminder that some places stay with you long after you leave.