The Amazing Space

We’ve been lucky to visit some great cities with awesome public spaces in our travels including Stanley Park in Vancouver, the Golden Gate park in San Francisco & the lake shore in Chicago. It’s so important for great cities to have a major natural feature and amazing public space. Sydney is full of stunning parks, great beaches, and amazing runs & rides, but we wanted to make the most of what we found on our travels. On this trip alone we spent time in 3 stunners. In San Fran I ran through the huge Golden Gate park. It’s 410ha, that’s bigger then New York’s central park (341ha), which is another great park. But it’s not the size that counts. Golden Gate park has such a diverse array of trails, running paths, cycling routes, lakes, playing fields, museums, a golf course(!?) & stunning gardens. And yet it still has room for a bison paddock. Amazing! For a tourist going for a meandering run through the park it was phenomenal. My planned run almost doubled in length just so I could see a few of the sights (including the bison!).
Chicago is an amazing city and the lake is a strong natural feature in the flat city. The lake shore drive cycling & running paths provide endless km of gorgeous training routes right next to the lake (which stretches all the way tot the horizon). The beaches are popular in summer (so we’ve been told) & they’re obviously well set up for beach volleyball & water sports. We also ran all around the city (42km of it!) during the marathon which was great.
Our final stop on this trip was Vancouver and Stanley park, right next to the city, is another amazing public space.  The sea wall ride is a great loop around the park with water views for about 300degrees around the ride. Through the middle of the park there are some great trails and beaver creek. The running is great with soft trails, paths for fast road running and everything in between. It also has some great cultural spots and great stops to refuel. Stanley park is another huge space coming in at 405ha (again bigger then NYC’s central park). Sydney’s centennial park (a big favourite of mine) is only 220ha to give you some perspective on the size. Vancouver’s natural beauty extends much farther then Stanley park though. As you walk through the city & look down the streets you’ll often see the mountains peaking between the buildings at the end of the street. It’s gorgeous! The 3 main mountains in close proximity (in North Vancouver) also provide a playground for hiking, skiing and a range of tourist activities. The Grouse Grind is a grueling hike up more then 2200 bush stairs, with stunning views at the top (& a cable car ride home). It certainly provided a massive challenge for me! The other mountains provide even more spectacular (& less touristy) hikes but we’ll have to save that for our next big Canada trip.

Some other great city parks around the world we’ve been lucky enough to see include the Tiergarten in Berlin (517ha), Villa Borghese (148ha) in Rome, and the stunning Holyrood park in Edinburgh (260ha), with the rugged Salisbury crags, Arthurs seat climb and the lochs.

Sydney really is an amazing city & it’s through travelling you appreciate home. Researching these parks I realized how lucky we are with all of our coastline, harbour inlets & parks and little metropolitan parks we are spoilt. Plus the amazing national parks that fringe our city including the 13200ha Royal National Park and the 15400ha Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. And of course the stunning Blue Mountains, a favourite playground of mine. It’s bad timing talking about this with all the recent bushfires, but be sure to take advantage of our beautiful outdoors, once it’s safe to do so.  And please make the most of your travels, exploring the parks & trails has been some of the best parts of our trip to North America.

What is your favourite city space around the world?