In the park

The girls and I went to the little park near our flat yesterday, where there are many pretty trees, a few small patches of grass, and a vast tarmacked play area with football goals basketball nets, swings and a slide. It is a typical Geneva park, which focuses on play areas for children, and not so much on green spaces.  Being Sunday the place was busy with families whose children were running everywhere. It was nice to see, as during the week much of the area is dedicated to the children attending the junior school also located in the park.
The city is littered with small parks with a grassy areas of a size insufficient for a decent game of football, or to give a dog a good run.  Instead the focus is on meeting the everyday play needs of school age children, the parks function as street and garden for the city's flat dwellers.
It is odd that in many of the parks we have visited the equipment for younger kids is not next to the equipment for older kids, which makes it difficult for many people who have children just a couple of years different in age to keep them both entertained.
My three year-old is just getting into "big" swings, whilst her younger sister is happily discovering the joys of being swung in a swing with safety bars. In the little park near our flat these two types of swings are located on opposite sides of a single storey building of class rooms, and a good two minutes walk from each other. Still, that's not to say that a small park nearby is not welcome, I can think of four less than 10 minutes walk from out flat. Clearly many people in Geneva enjoy living close to a park just as much as we do; on Sunday I saw dozens of bicycles and scooters, countless pushchairs, several footballs, and even one family contriving to play cricket.
It is said that provision in the way of parks for children, in this city is excellent: I can see myself agreeing with that statement when I have grown used to the set up. When it is no longer alien to find a school in the middle of a park; when I am comfortable knowing that if I want big swings next to baby swings I have to go to a park that has no slide, where as if I want a slide, I have to go to a park where there's not enough grass to play football on. When I've figured out which parks I need for which occasions, I will happily agree the provision of play areas for kids in this city is excellent.