My first trip ever to Mexico was for business, to attend a conference. I arrived at my hotel and once settled, promptly walked out onto the Reforma. The center divide of this broad avenue is basically one long public park, and it being a Sunday, thousands of families were strolling along, buying snacks from street vendors, watching jugglers and fire-breathers, and just enjoying themselves in the warm afternoon.

Sueño de una tarde dominical en la Alameda Central (detail)—Diego Rivera

So passed my first glimpse of how Mexicans use parks: they use them a lot, and they use them well. They use them for entertainment, for socialization, for family time. Multi-generation groups spread out on the grass, picnicking. Children are carried; hence, no fussing and crying. Lovers test the limits of public display of affection. Pairs of girls walk along, arms linked. Groups of boys lean against walls, mumbling ineffective come-ons to the girls.

Mexico City, that I had been so sternly warned about, seemed to me to be the friendliest, safest place I had ever been that afternoon.

Jean and I are fortunate to live one door up Aldama Street from Parque Juárez, a green space in San Miguel de Allende that gets heavy use by residents and visitors alike.

As part of a recent renovation project, a gazebo was built near the entrance closest to our house. It probably should receive more use than it does, but we get enough loud music and other celebratory noises at our house. I'm certainly not complaining about infrequent use of the bandstand.

Mature trees provide welcome shade, under which swathes of flowers bloom.

One important function of Parque Juárez is to provide space for exercise. Our narrow, cobblestone, traffic-choked streets are unpleasant and unsafe for joggers, so every morning, scores show up to chuff around the walking paths.

Others engage in apparently less strenuous exercises. This group seems to be doing the Hokey Pokey. "You put your left arm in/You put your left arm out/You put your left arm in and you shake it all about..." (Sorry.)

This young woman, is she practicing Tai Chi? She looks very determined.

The park's basketball courts receive heavy use. Scores of intracity teams practice and compete here.

An aerobics class meets every Saturday morning. I know it's every week because ear-splitting music knifes into my patio. There was a time when I would have ranted and raved about the inability of the city to control noise pollution. Nowadays, it's sort of comforting to know that 200 women are toning up, combating Mexico's obesity epidemic, second only to America's. And anyway, sound doesn't bother me near as much as it used to.

Any park worth its salt posts rules and regulations. Parque Juárez has at least XVIII of them.

I've observed that Mexico is a country of laws and regulations; it has perhaps more of them than anywhere else. And everyone knows that they're enforced, shall we say, unevenly. Among the park's 18 regulations: You're not allowed to make noise that bothers other people, consume alcohol or drugs or be under the influence of alcohol or "stupefactants," or to play futbal in the walking paths.

Yeah. Right. It's faintly amusing to watch policemen walk by while all of these regulations are being openly flaunted.

At one point, a cop did tell me I had to put our Boston Terrier, Rosie, on a leash. But when I explained to him that she considered the park to be her yard, and would simply not submit to being leashed, he relented. Who says Mexican police are tough?

An old saying is that nobody goes hungry in Mexico, and the park provides snack stand concessions so that nobody in fact does.

A baggie of deep-fried styrofoam with hot sauce and a sugary soft drink will quiet any stomach.

On Sundays, there's an Art Walk at the eastern end of the park.

Here my friend Anamaria is "selling" some of her work. Or re-reading Proust. Or greeting a passing neighbor.

She lives the good life.

On weekends the children's playground fills up. A gringo couple donated the money to renovate the facility, and it receives constant use. It's perhaps one of the best public works in the city, in terms of the amount of benefit it provides.

No one is too young to find diversion in the park. A girl helps her baby sister see what's going on in the gazebo.

On holidays, the permanent snack stands can't handle the demand, so vendor carts show up. The soft drink man on the left reminds me of Tim Conway's shuffling old man on the Carol Burnett Show. It took him about an hour and the help of several bystanders to get his cart from the park entrance to his stakeout.

The ice cream vendor on the right sold out after an hour. The hot flavor of the day was "blue".

You know it's a holiday when schoolgirls wear their uniforms to the park. They probably marched in a parade somewhere.

The girl in the middle might want to hook up with the aerobics class.

Just about every day at any time, something is going on in Parque Juárez. The whole community uses it: gringos walking their poodles, lovers clinched on hidden benches, toddlers trying to climb ladders, poor families from outlying colonias who took the bus in for their day off. As parks go, I've seen better facilities. But I've never seen any park better used.