7 Best Sights in Costa Rica

Heredia is centered on tree-studded Parque Central, which gets our vote for the country's loveliest and liveliest central park, surrounded by some notable buildings spanning more than 250 years of history. The park has a large, round, cast-iron fountain imported from England in 1879 and a Victorian bandstand where the municipal band plays on Sunday morning and Thursday night. Families, couples, and old-timers sit on park benches, shaded by fig and towering palm trees, often inhabited by noisy and colorful flocks of crimson-fronted parakeets. Drop into Pops, a national ice-cream chain, at the south side of the park and pick up a cone, then take a seat on a park bench and watch the passing parade.

Royal palms and massive mango trees fill Alajuela's central park, which also has a lovely fountain imported from Glasgow and concrete benches where locals gather to chat. Everyone agrees the futuristic gazebo at the center of the park is a bit of an eyesore. Surrounding the plaza is an odd mix of charming old buildings and sterile concrete boxes.

This shady little park is a favorite spot for locals and visitors alike. A bronze statue of Costa Rica's Spanish founder, Juan Vázquez de Coronado, overlooks an elevated fountain on its southwest corner; the opposite corner has a lovely tiled guardhouse. A bust of Queen Isabella of Castile stares at the yellow compound to the east of the park, the Centro Nacional de la Cultura. The bright yellow colonial-style building to the east of the modern INS building is the 1912 Casa Amarilla, home of Costa Rica's Foreign Ministry. The massive ceiba tree in front, planted by John F. Kennedy and the presidents of all the Central American nations in 1963, gives you an idea of how quickly things grow in the tropics. A garden around the corner on Calle 13 contains a 6-foot-wide section of the Berlin Wall donated by Germany's Foreign Ministry after reunification. Ask the guard to let you into the garden if you want a closer look. As with all San José parks, safety declines markedly after dark. Be on your way out before 5 pm.

Though it isn't centrally located, the 180-acre La Sabana ("the savannah") comes the closest of San José's green spaces to achieving the same function and spirit as New York's Central Park. La Sabana was once San José's airport, and the whitewashed Museo de Arte Costarricense, just south of the Cortes statue, served as its terminal and control tower.

The round Gimnasio Nacional (National Gymnasium) sits at the park's southeast corner and hosts sporting events and the occasional concert. The Estadio Nacional, a sleek, futuristic-looking 40,000-seat stadium—a controversial gift from the government of China, which decided to use its own construction workers rather than employ locals—looms over the park's northwest corner. It hosts soccer matches primarily, but Paul McCartney, Elton John, Shakira, and Lady Gaga have all performed in the stadium. In between are acres of space for soccer, basketball, tennis, swimming, jogging, picnicking, and kite flying. The park hums with activity on weekends. The stadium grounds are fine, but avoid walking through the rest of the park after the sun goes down.

Anchored by the 1920 Templo de Música (Temple of Music), a neoclassical bandstand that has become the symbol of the city, downtown's largest park is somewhat barren, though the pink-and-gold trumpet trees on its northwest corner brighten things up when they bloom in the dry months. The so-called "metal building," the Edificio Metálico, fronts the north side of the park and dates from 1896. Its iron exterior was shipped in prefabricated sheets from Belgium and assembled here at a time when iron was thought to be able to withstand earthquakes. (The church in the western Central Valley community of Grecia is Costa Rica's other prominent example of such iron architecture.) As a working elementary school, the building is not open to the public, but it can be admired from the outside. The park is named for Honduran general Francisco Morazán, whose dream of a united Central America failed in the 1830s. Avoid the park late at night, when a rough crowd appears.

A bronze monument commemorating Central America's battles against North American invader William Walker in 1856 forms the centerpiece of the large, leafy park. Five Amazons, representing the five nations of the isthmus, attack Walker, who shields his face from the onslaught. Costa Rica maintains the lead and shelters a veiled Nicaragua, the country most devastated by the war. Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador might dispute this version of events, but this is how Costa Rica chose to commission the work by French sculptor Louis Carrier Belleuse, a student of Rodin, in 1895. Bas-relief murals on the monument's pedestal depict key battles in the war against the Americans. As with all San José parks, you should avoid the space after dark.

The aquamarine wooden port building faces the cruise terminal, and just to the east lies the city's palm-lined seaside park, Parque Vargas. From the promenade facing the ocean you can see the raised dead coral left stranded by the 1991 earthquake. Ten or so Hoffman's two-toed sloths live in the trees of Parque Vargas; ask a passerby to point them out, as spotting them requires a trained eye.