Dayventure: Treasure Hunting, Chowder, and a Bookshop Cat in Mount Dora, Florida
This Dayventure sends you within easy driving distance of Orlando for one complete, unhurried day — a destination worth lingering in, a meal worth sitting down for, and a final stop that feels like a reward.
This edition heads northwest on US-441 to Mount Dora, a lakeside town draped in Spanish moss and stacked with more character per square block than most Florida cities manage per zip code.
The plan: spend the morning lost in one of the largest antique markets in the South, land at a tiny seafood institution that has been winning chowder championships since before it ever had a brick-and-mortar address, and walk off lunch at an independent bookshop where the cat picks your next read.
Getting There
Mount Dora sits roughly 40 minutes northwest of Orlando via US-441 North, and the drive gives you time to settle into the right headspace for a day like this. Once you clear the county line and drop into Lake County, the terrain changes in a way that catches people off guard — the land begins to roll, gently but distinctly, and the light through the live oaks along the highway feels different from anything the flat sprawl of the metro offers. You are, briefly, somewhere else.
Leave by 8 a.m. Renninger’s opens early and rewards the people who arrive when the dew is still on the Spanish moss.
The Activity: Renninger’s Antique Center & Flea Market
📍 20651 US Hwy 441, Mount Dora, FL 32757 🕘 Antique Center: Fri 10am–4pm · Sat–Sun 9am–5pm | Flea & Farmer’s Market: Sat–Sun 8am–4pm 💰 Free admission · Free parking · Pet friendly
Renninger’s sits just off US-441 on the eastern edge of Mount Dora, and your first view of it from the highway — 117 acres of rolling, oak-canopied land with vendor tents, open-air buildings, and the Street of Shops stretching back into the shade.
The property is divided into two distinct markets that operate side by side. The Antique Center anchors the south end with a 40,000-square-foot air-conditioned building housing more than 180 booths. While the Street of Shops extends outside in a series of small individual buildings lining shaded walkways, each one its own micro-world worth stepping into slowly.
On the north side, the Flea and Farmer’s Market opens Saturday and Sunday mornings with hundreds more vendors covering fresh produce, clothing, plants, crafts, oddities, and the particular category of item that sits between “someone’s old junk” and “someone else’s treasure” — the category that makes flea markets worth getting up early for.
Budget at least two hours here, ideally three. If you arrive at opening, the light through the oaks is particularly good, the crowd is thin, and the dealers are at their most conversational. Food concessions on site mean you can fuel up without leaving the property if you lose track of time — which is the entire point.
On the Way from Renninger’s to Downtown: A Slow Ride Worth Taking
The drive from Renninger’s to downtown Mount Dora is only about a mile, but resist the urge to move straight to lunch. Come down US-441 and turn onto Old US-441 where it splits toward the lake, then take the long way in along the waterfront past the marina. The view of downtown Mount Dora from lakeside — the town rising up its modest hill above the water, the enormous oaks leaning over the rooftops — is one of the most genuinely pretty small-town vistas in Florida, and it’s the kind of thing that gets overlooked when you’re driving in on autopilot. Give it a glance. Take a breath. The chowder will wait five minutes.
Park anywhere along Donnelly Street or on one of the side streets off 5th Avenue. The downtown is compact enough that you’re never more than a short walk from wherever you need to be.
The Walk Before Lunch: Donnelly Street at Mid-Morning
Tony’s Chowder House opens at 11 a.m., which means if you timed Renninger’s right, you have a window of twenty or thirty minutes to walk Donnelly Street before you commit to a table. This is not dead time. This is some of the best walking in Central Florida.
Donnelly Street is Mount Dora’s main commercial corridor, and it is lined almost entirely with independent shops that feel as though they grew here organically rather than being installed by a developer.
The storefronts themselves, housed in buildings from the early 1900s with their original facades largely intact, are worth looking at just as architecture. The Donnelly House at the far end of the street — a Queen Anne Victorian from 1893 that looks, depending on your frame of mind, either like a wedding cake or a haunted manor — anchors the northern end of the walk and is one of the most photographed buildings in Lake County for good reason.
The Restaurant: Tony’s Chowder House
📍 622 N. Donnelly St, Mount Dora, FL 32757 🕘 Mon–Fri 11am–3pm · Sat 11am–6pm · Sun 11am–3pm 📞 (352) 729-2834 | tonyschowder.com
Before you go in, know this isn’t just your average chowder. To understand what you’re about to eat, you need to understand where it came from — and where it came from is one of the most quietly remarkable places left in Florida.
The Story of Cedar Key Clams and Tony’s World Famous Cedar Key Chowder
The chowder itself has a history that predates the Mount Dora location by more than a decade. Tony’s Cedar Key Clam Chowder won the Great Chowder Cook-Off in Newport, Rhode Island three consecutive years — 2009, 2010, and 2011 — and was retired to the competition’s Hall of Fame. The version in your bowl in Mount Dora is that chowder: thick, briny, loaded with clams and potatoes, finished with a depth of flavor that consistently stops people from New England cold because they were not expecting to find this in Florida. Order a bowl. Order a cup first if you want to be cautious, but you will end up with a bowl.
Tony’s is small. At peak lunch hours on a Saturday, there may be a wait. This is not a problem. Walk across the street to Donnelly Park, find a bench under the oaks, and let the day proceed at its own pace. You are not in a hurry. That is the whole premise.
A note to take home with you: Tony’s sells its chowder by the can at the front counter, and the employee who finds out it’s your first visit has been known to send you home with one as a gift. Take them up on it.
The Shop on the Way Out: Barrel of Books and Games
📍 403 N. Donnelly St, Mount Dora, FL 32757 🕘 Mon–Thu 10am–6pm · Fri–Sat 10am–8pm · Sun 12pm–6pm 📞 (352) 735-1950 | barrelofbooksandgames.com
Walk three blocks south from Tony’s and you’ll find Barrel of Books and Games, which looks from the outside like a pleasant bookshop and reveals itself from the inside to be considerably more than that. The exterior is painted with books — an appropriate signal — and the interior is bigger than the storefront suggests, which is the most consistent thing reviewers say about it and which continues to surprise people who have been told in advance.
Owner Chrissy Stile has built something here that feels genuinely rare: an independent bookshop that stocks both new and used titles without the used section feeling like an afterthought, a dedicated room of collectible books for the people who know what they’re looking for, a solid collection of board games and puzzles and toys for the people who don’t come in planning to buy a game and leave having bought a game, and a comfortable reading area where you can sit with something from the shelf and decide if it’s yours before you commit. The pricing on used books is reasonable in the way that good used bookshops always are — honest, a little generous, the kind that makes you wonder how they stay in business and then hope they do forever.
And then there is Paige. Paige is the store cat, a detail mentioned in enough reviews that it has clearly become part of the establishment’s identity and part of what people come back for. If you find Paige and Paige approves of you, consider that a good omen for whatever you’re about to read next.
Notice we did not post a pic of Paige…Seek and Ye Shall Find. 🙂
This is the last stop of the Dayventure for good reason. A bookshop is the right place to end a day that started with digging through other people’s history at Renninger’s, because the logic is the same: you are looking for something, you may not know exactly what it is until you find it, and the looking is more than half the pleasure. Buy something. Let Paige weigh in. Then point the car back south on US-441 and let the live oaks and the rolling Lake County hills ease you back toward the highway.
That’s a Dayventure.
Plan Your Visit
- Renninger’s Antique Center & Flea Market: 20651 US Hwy 441, Mount Dora, FL | renningers.net | Antique Center: Fri–Sun. Flea Market: Sat–Sun. Free admission, free parking.
- Tony’s Chowder House: 622 N. Donnelly St, Mount Dora, FL | (352) 729-2834 | tonyschowder.com | Mon–Sun 11am–3pm, Sat until 6pm. Small restaurant — expect a wait on busy weekends.
- Barrel of Books and Games: 403 N. Donnelly St, Mount Dora, FL | (352) 735-1950 | barrelofbooksandgames.com | Open daily. Say hello to Paige.
- Donnelly Park: Central downtown, shaded, free, and open. Great for the wait before Tony’s.
- Gilbert Park: Lakefront, playground, picnic areas. Best for families with kids.
- Grantham Point / Lighthouse Park: Five-minute walk south of downtown via Alexander Street. Free, open daily, worth the detour.
Hours are current as of March 2026. Always confirm before visiting, as schedules change seasonally.