Once Upon a Time in Celebration
- Celebration, Florida
- Feb 16, 2016
- 3 min read

American grandeur. The perfect façades of a country that has so much to hide. I’ve always wanted to witness it myself, to see if it was true, and not some kind of rumour that lost its true meaning while traveling all the way across the Atlantic. Well, I’ve seen it now. The American Dream exists in the adorable town of Celebration, Florida. Later we would find out that this perfect little town was an extension of Disney World, but when we first entered it… wow. Just wow.

We came across Celebration by accident. We just went for a ride and then, well. A toll road happened. Let’s just say that in our country, there aren’t many toll roads. And if you happen to come across one, they’re rather obvious. Usually there are many signs before you end up at the many manned gates, so you have quite some chances to go off the road before then. If you choose to take the toll road, there are various paying methods. It would seem that in the Sunshine State, toll roads work quite differently. You just take a turn and end up at an unmanned gate with no option to turn around. And no other option than to pay with 2 quarter dollar coins. Now, a couple of silly tourists with no American toll road experience and just dollar bills in their pockets… Long story short, we had no other choice than to pull up next to the gate and hope for another passing car with a nice driver who was willing to change my dollar bill for the much needed coins. And we got lucky! The first car that passed had two people in it who were nice enough to pull over. I proposed to change my bill for 2 coins, so they’d get double the money. The couple just laughed, gave me coins and drove off before I got to give them the bill. Faith in Americans restored!

Making the best of it, we took the toll road and drove off to see where we’d end up. When we saw the name ‘Celebration’ on the signs, our curiosity was immediately piqued and we went to check it out. As soon as we saw the first houses, our jaws dropped. We saw massive villas, for our standards of course, which were perfectly taken care of and emitted a fake kind of beauty, like on a film set. The exact image of what we understood to be the American Dream. Impressive, in a strange kind of way.

We parked the car somewhere we deemed safe and went for a walk. There were many cute little shops, perfectly cultured flowers, a gorgeous lake with beautiful waterfowl, fountains, squirrels in trees, and the smell of barbecues filled the air. To us, it was like we were walking straight into an American fairytale. While the sun was setting, we strolled into a residential area with houses and cars the two of us will never be able to pay. The strangest thing was, in this residential area, we barely saw anyone. Was it even real? "Film set" really is the only description I can come up with.

Barely believing that people actually lived in that picture perfect place, we got into our rental Dodge and drove back into reality. We had gained another experience we only could have gotten in the pretentious USA. America has been unreal to us in many ways, but Celebration takes the cake. Pun intended.
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