The park on the hill

After my tour and a nap I ventured North out of the city, a direction I hadn't taken yet. I crossed a bridge and started to head up a hill on a path leading into a sprawing park. At the top I came to a huge sculpture of a metronome. On a previous tour, my friend Tomas pointed it out (it can be seen from the city center) and told me that it was placed on the spot where Stalin's statue used to stand. The whole area around the metronome stinks of communism. The granite stairs that lead up to the old statue site, a huge stone lookout over the city with two massive copper bowls on either side (to be filled with fire, I imagine) and everything covered in grafitti. Behind the metronome is a concrete park with many levels, stairs and walls, a skateboarder's heaven, and well-populated. I sat for about an hour and watched them, with my back to the spectacular view of the city, such were the talents of the skaters. Some of them were really young, like 9 or 10 it seemed, and were popping up onto walls 3 feet high without breaking speed. The older kids were doing stuff that is still a mystery to me. The board seemed to spin in all possible directions for a blurry second before the kid would land on it and glide away on the edge of a iron rail, all with the nonchalance of someone out for a stroll.
The park has the best views of the city I've seen so far. There were lots of families out, joggers and kids playing soccer. It smelled like Fall, both a comforting smell and a nostalgic one, and I walked around till the sun was almost gone.