{"id":3716,"date":"2010-09-20T17:00:15","date_gmt":"2010-09-20T21:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/?p=3716"},"modified":"2010-09-20T17:00:15","modified_gmt":"2010-09-20T21:00:15","slug":"green-with-envy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/2010\/09\/green-with-envy\/","title":{"rendered":"Green with Envy"},"content":{"rendered":"

That’s what every city in the world should be, because they don’t have as much green as London does. \u00a0No, I don’t mean money, I mean real green, in the form of parks.<\/p>\n

As I write this, I am sitting in my favorite of London\u2019s parks, Regent\u2019s Park.\u00a0 In fact, I didn\u2019t realize that it was my favorite until I ventured here, knowing that I needed to write about parks and wanting to get away from the city for a while without going far from the Arran House.\u00a0 After consulting my A to Z, I found that we\u2019ve been living for a month not 15 minutes away from one of London\u2019s most beautiful parks, which is saying something, because London has some wonderful ones.\u00a0 Of these, I have visited three, and they are probably London\u2019s most famous: Regent\u2019s, Hyde, and St. James.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll start with Regent\u2019s.\u00a0 As I said, I came here needing to be somewhere quiet, and most importantly, green.\u00a0 I love the outdoors, and was feeling like I hadn\u2019t gotten enough of them while in London.\u00a0 Regent\u2019s quickly fixed that though.\u00a0 Probably best known for its prominent role in the 101 Dalmatians and James Bond (MI6 is near the Park), Regent\u2019s Park is situated on 410 acres in Marylebone. \u00a0Its perfectly trimmed flowerbeds, beautiful fountains, and huge open spaces are a breath of fresh air, literally and figuratively.\u00a0 The one thing that really differentiates Regent\u2019s from the other parks I will talk about is the lack of tourists.\u00a0 Regent\u2019s doesn\u2019t have anything particularly special for tourists, as opposed to Hyde and St. James, so it is both less busy and quieter.\u00a0 It also houses the London Zoo (yes, the one that Harry Potter went to in the first book), for any animal lovers out there.<\/p>\n

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Regent's Park<\/p><\/div>\n

Next up is Hyde, or specifically Kensington Gardens, which is contiguous with Hyde, and is often thought of as part of the same park (technically its not… I also visited Hyde, and it’s much the same as the Gardens).\u00a0 Like Regent\u2019s, it features wide open spaces, fountains, and gardens.\u00a0 However, it also contains Kensington Palace (which also serves as a shrine to Princess Diana), the world-famous Peter Pan statue, and the Prince Albert Memorial, which all attract a lot of tourists, which increases the \u201cbusyness\u201d of the park, and changes its atmosphere.\u00a0 It is still a very nice park, but it just doesn\u2019t have the feel of Regent\u2019s.<\/p>\n

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Peter Pan Statue in Kensington Gardens<\/p><\/div>\n

Lastly, St. James Park.\u00a0 Once again, lots of open space, water features, and flowers.\u00a0 The big tourist attractions here completely surround the park, rather than being contained in it.\u00a0 These include, but are not limited to, the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, and Buckingham Palace.\u00a0 This brings a lot of people to the park which, while not a bad thing, makes it feel crowded, which is not how parks should be in my mind. \u00a0It is an absolutely beautiful park though, despite its well-publisized history of, well, err… you know. \u00a0For those that don’t, Edward II had dozens of children, none with his wife, and loved spending time in the park. \u00a0I’ll let you do the math.<\/p>\n

To wrap up, I\u2019d like to mention that London\u2019s parks have really cool birds.\u00a0 At Kensington and St. James, there are tons of brown geese and small little birds, pictures of which I\u2019ve attached below.\u00a0 At Regent\u2019s though, they seem to have completely different breeds of birds, which you can also see below. \u00a0St. James also has pelicans, which I unfortunately don’t have pictures of.<\/p>\n

I have no idea why the birds would be so different between one park and another, unless these birds were purposefully introduced to their respective parks, which would be a conclusion requiring an understanding of London parks history that I lack. \u00a0Anyone with more insight, please feel free to chime in.<\/p>\n

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Bird characteristic of the populations found at Regent's Park<\/p><\/div>\n

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Swan, characteristic of the bird populations at Kensington Gardens and St. James Park<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That’s what every city in the world should be, because they don’t have as much green as London does. \u00a0No, I don’t mean money, I mean real green, in the form of parks. As I write this, I am sitting in my favorite of London\u2019s parks, Regent\u2019s Park.\u00a0 In fact, I didn\u2019t realize that it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":384,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6691],"tags":[828],"class_list":["post-3716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2010-matthewm","tag-parks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/384"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3716\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/norwichhumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}