How's your park?

[Liep]

The weather was nice today so I walked down to the local park, Søndermarken, to get a nap and read some Murakami. Got me wondering how the parks of Languishites all over the world are.








So get out and take some pictures!

[The Brain]

The major park in Stockholm is Djurgården, which covers a huge area immediately east and northeast of the inner city.  It used to be the royal hunting enclosure, now it has museums, (modest) palaces, restaurants, amusement park, zoo, embassies, luxurious private villas, TV tower, large open areas and woods. It is awesome, especially the southern part, Södra Djurgården, which is often what people mean when they say Djurgården.

Photo showing the southern part, the northern part can be partially seen in the upper right corner. I haven't taken any pics myself so this is it.

[Grey Fox]

Well like that but with a couple baseball field & kids play grounds thrown in for good measure.

[CountDeMoney]

I'd look, but it's too goddamned hot out.

[Darth Wagtaros]

Can't. It is disgusting out there.  How I long for a nice Nor'easter.

[Razgovory]

I don't actually own a camera.  The closest park is Memorial, (about six blocks away), I imagine it's green right now.

[Iormlund]

Parque josé Antonio Labordeta (local folk singer turned MP who died a few years ago). Most of us still call it Primo de Rivera (1930's dictator) or simple Parque Grande (big park).

The park sits between the Imperial Canal (south, east) and the river Huerva(north, west), and is dominated by an elevation at the southern side. The big complex at the other side of the river in the west is the biggest hospital in the region (where I've spent quite a lot of time).

There's a statue on that hill of King Alfonso el Batallador, who retook the city from the Moors.

The main avenue from the hill. That's where my father taught me to ride a bicycle many aeons ago.



I used to live in the tower block to the left when I was a kid.

[Syt]

About half of Vienna's area is parks and other green areas. Notable are:

Prater - mostly known outside Vienna for its amusement park, which only is a small part of the whole (in total, Prater is about twice the size of Central Park). It's popular with runners for its wide avenues.


Burggarten behind the Hofburg. The Schmetterlingshaus Café with its exotic butterflies is also there. A popular summer hangout.


The Stadtpark is between First and Third district. Nice in summer, unpleasant at night.



In my part of town, about ten minutes by tram from me, is the Wienerberg.


The Augarten is popular with the people in 2nd district. It used to have a great summer open air movie theater, but they don't do that anymore, because the Wiener Sängerknaben (boys' choir), "needed" a concert hall (because Vienna has so few of those).


Schönbrunn is probably the park most vistied by tourists.



Near Schönbrunn is the Lainzer Tiergarten, an old Imperial game reserve that houses hundreds of wild boar, plus deer, mouflons etc. The whole area is about 2500 hectars, or close to 6200 acres. It's not unusual to lie in a meadow for a picknick and have a herd of animals stroll past.



There's also the 21 km long Danube Island, created, when the "New Danube" was created, an artificial arm of the river to alleviate flood risks.


And there's the Zentralfriedhof, Europe's most "populated" cemetery, the largest among Vienna's 50.



There's plenty more parks, large and small (e.g. at Prince Eugene's Belvedere Castle, or the Volksgarten between Burgtheater and Hburg), the Votivpark which has lounge chairs in summer, etc.).

[CountDeMoney]

My local park?

[Josephus]

Mine's more or less the same, give or take a few passed-out Indians on the ground and used condoms.

[Ideologue]

http://www.ficenc.com/hpfixgal_flora_a_fauna___zentralfriedhof_rehe_doppelt_21_04_2013_14_33_10.jpg

DEMON.

[mongers]

Some very beautiful parks there.   

Since I live in/on the border of a national park, there aren't really any such formal parks around here.

[The Larch]

Close to my home I have the Camilo José Cela park, a small park created to cover the slope between my street and the one right down (my city is very hilly and steep slopes are pretty common).



The park is ok-ish during the day and seedy-ish during the night. Nothing to write home about, anyway.

Then we have the park on the Castro hill, the main vantage point in my city.



The name of Castro comes from the presence of a pre-Roman hill fort or castrum on it. It's from the IInd century BC, and has recently been turned into a museum.





On top of the hill there's a XVIth century fortress overlooking the bay. On the top there's a garden with fountains, but you can still get into the guard spots and peek a boo.











The anchors and cannons were salvaged from the bottom of the bay, from shipwrecks from the Battle of Vigo Bay (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Vigo_Bay) in 1702. The legend says that there's still plenty of gold down there, and this was referenced by Jules Verne in "20 thousand leagues under the sea", where Nemo takes his Nautilus crew to the wrecks to load up gold bars. Thanks to this Verne has a (rather ) monument, in another part of town.



Then there's the Castrelos park, the biggest in the city (22 thousand square metres), also called Quiñones de León after its main feature, the Quiñones de León pazo (a kind of rural manor typical from Galicia), currently a museum.







Surrounding the pazo there are several gardens, including a French style one and an English style one. This is the most popular spot in the city for newlywed couples to take their wedding pictures.









The other main feature of the park is an open air auditorium, with plenty of concerts being organized every summer.





The stands at the back are public access, so I've had the chance to listen to lots of big name bands (Leonard Cohen, Oasis, Arctic Monkeys, Franz Ferdinand, Goran Bregovic, Mike Oldfield, Helloween...besides lots of Spanish bands you've never heard about) there for free.

Besides these two spots, there are plenty of quaint places around the park, mostly in the upper parts, which are less frequented by visitors. We onced hosted a LARP game inspired in the Call of Cthulhu RPG there, awesome experience.













It is also a very popular place for runners. When I played rugby we used to go there once every week for endurance training.

[Scipio]

On the Fourth of July, My Official Wife (TM) and I went to the DeSoto National Forest south of Hattiesburg, and shot rifles to celebrate 'Murrica.  It was fucking surreal.

Also, there's a bitching disc golf course in the National Forest, and a canoe rental place.

[mongers]

Yi's dail-up is screaming.