Look, it should be a beautiful park in the center of a beautiful island. It's a decent-enough-looking park, and while it's not in the geographic center of the island, it's in the middle of the island as the streets are laid out--not completely symmetrically but close enough.
So this should be a four-star review, right?
Wrong!
Parks are for people to enjoy. Full stop. If parks aren't enjoyable by people, they're just like all the other foppery we've come to know and expect from the people around us who love to advertise how much extra money they have to spend. No, the park isn't ostentatious-looking, but while it has cute hedges that separate the grassy sections from the tiled path that leads from the street to the central fountain, the place feels more like it's supposed to be looked at than used.
Yes, there are benches; but they're tiny, uncomfortable, and in annoying places. I may want to sit on the tiled path and look at the fountain, but I may also want to sit in the grass and look outside the park. And although each green section has at least one tree, the trees are too young to provide as much shade as they should. Methinks the neighbors don't want tall trees blocking their view of their neighbors' houses, which are omnipresent proof of their own increasing property values.
Also, would it have killed them to add a sidewalk all the way around the park so that it's possible to circumambulate it without walking in the street and/or avoiding parked cars?
It's pretty at night but can be a disappointment during the day. The fountain is meh. All in all, it reminds me of a later version of the Pea Soup Andersen's in Buellton, which just closed (RIP)--what should (and used to?) be magical has seen better days and is now a shell of what it could be. read more