In a town that’s condensed to one area, sometimes the activities in Gainesville can feel a bit limited. While it can be difficult to explore on a budget, take some time to break up your normal daily routine with some fun for under 15 dollars.
Get Air Gainesville
If you loved indoor trampolines in high school, you’ll probably love them even more now. Take a day to decompress and temporarily relieve your stress by spending some time jumping. Pick a day like Tuesday when you can get bogo jumping time, costing you only 13 dollars for two hours of sweet tricks and flips you’ll probably post on Instagram (or at least Snapchat).
Funworks
I’m not sure that anyone ever actually gets sick of skating and arcades. At Funworks, for 10 dollars on Fridays, you can relive your past by winning Go-Kart races and climbing the rock wall. It’s a little known gem that can bring back the glory days of elementary school skating parties.
Karaoke at Stage 7
If you have stage fright, you’ll appreciate the private-room karaoke at Stage 7. Round up your friends during non-peak hours, and you can spend as little as $4 to sing your heart out in the comfort of your own room. Bonus incentive: the bar and snacks.
Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park. For just $6, you have entry to explore the preserve. Bring some snacks to take with you and you can have a makeshift picnic atop the watchtower. There are trails if you enjoy hiking, and a lake if you’d rather just spend some time in the sun.
Florida Museum of Natural History and Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art. It is really, really cool that we have not one, but two museums on campus free for students. Even if you’ve been there before, it’s worth a second trip seeing that the main exhibits change. If anything, a visit to the Butterfly Rainforest will be sure to lift your spirits.
Get creative. My friends and I went on a coffee crawl and sampled places around town that we wanted to try, like Maude’s Classic Cafe, Wyatt’s Coffee and Bay Islands Coffee Company (a personal favorite of ours). Pick something that you love (a pizza crawl doesn’t sound bad either) and take on trying all the places you’ve been talking about for ages.
Use your next free day to try out somewhere new – Gainesville is full of surprises if you’re willing to look.
Photo credit: gainesvillegetair.com